Active Server Pages (ASP), also known as Classic ASP or ASP Classic, was Microsoft's first server-side script engine for dynamically-generated web pages. Initially released as an add-on to Internet Information Services (IIS) via the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack, it was subsequently included as a free component of Windows Server (since the initial release of Windows 2000 Server). It has now been superseded by ASP.NET.
Developing functionality in ASP websites is enabled by the active scripting engine's support of the Component Object Model (COM), with each object providing a related group of frequently-used functions and data attributes. In ASP 2.0 there were six built-in objects: Application, ASPError, Request, Response, Server, and Session. Session, for example, is a cookie-based session object that maintains the state of variables from page to page. Functionality is further extended by objects which, when instantiated, provide access to the environment of the web server; as an example FileSystemObject (FSO) is used to create, read, update and delete files.
Web pages with the .asp file extension use ASP, although some Web sites disguise their choice of scripting language for security purposes (e.g. still using the more common .htm or .html extension). Pages with the .aspx extension are ASP.NET (based on Microsoft's .NET Framework) and compiled, which makes them faster and more robust than server-side scripting in ASP which is interpreted at run-time; however, many ASP.NET pages still include some ASP scripting. Such marked differences between ASP and ASP.NET have led to the terms Classic ASP or ASP Classic being used, which also implies some nostalgia for the simpler platform.
Most ASP pages are written in VBScript, but any other Active Scripting engine can be selected instead by using the @Language directive or the <script language="language" runat="server"> syntax. JScript (Microsoft's implementation of ECMAScript) is the other language that is usually available. PerlScript (a derivative of Perl) and others are available as third-party installable Active Scripting engines.
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unknown
Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:10:31 GM
On the other hand, . Active Server Pages. runs - for the most part - solely on Windows servers. This can cause some problems. Windows hosting or private servers generally cost more than Unix servers, making it less accessible than PHP. ...
