What is ASP?

ASP is a server side scripting technology that enables scripts (embedded in web pages) to be executed by an Internet server.

What is ASP?

• ASP is a Microsoft Technology
• ASP stands for Active Server Pages
• ASP is a program that runs inside IIS
• IIS stands for Internet Information Services
• IIS comes as a free component with Windows 2000
• IIS is also a part of the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack
• The Option Pack can be downloaded from Microsoft
• PWS is a smaller - but fully functional - version of IIS
• PWS can be found on your Windows 95/98 CD

What is an ASP File?

• An ASP file is just the same as an HTML file
• An ASP file can contain text, HTML, XML, and scripts
• Scripts in an ASP file are executed on the server
• An ASP file has the file extension ".asp"

How Does it Work?

• When a browser requests an HTML file, the server returns the file
• When a browser requests an ASP file, IIS passes the request to the ASP engine on the server
• The ASP engine reads the file, line by line, and executes the scripts in the file
• Finally, the ASP file is returned to the browser as plain HTML
• Before you study ASP .NET, it would help to have a basic understanding of Microsoft's ASP technology.