ASP Tutorial

Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side design environment that you can use to create engaging, real-world Web applications. An ASP page is an HTML page that contains server-side scripts that are processed by the Web server before being sent to the user's browser. Unlike conventional Common Gateway Interface (CGI) applications which are difficult to create, ASP is designed to greatly simplify the process of developing Web applications. With just of few lines of script you can add database connectivity or advanced customization features to your Web pages. In the past, you had to know PERL or C to add such functionality, but with ASP you can use ordinary Web scripting languages such as Microsoft JScript (Microsoft's implementation of the ECMA 262 language specification), Microsoft Visual Basic (VBScript), or any COM compliant scripting language, including JavaScript, PERL, and others.

Beyond ordinary scripting tasks, you can also use ASP to extend your scripts into COM components. These reusable, programmatic modules let you scale your scripts into full-fledged applications that perform complex tasks such as transaction processing for electronic commerce.

This three-module tutorial provides a step-by-step introduction to a handful of useful Active Server Pages features. You can learn how to implement these features with either VBScript or JScript.

This section contains:

Creating ASP Pages: In this module, you will create ASP pages (.asp files) that use some of the fundamental features of HTML and Active Server Pages. You should have some familiarity with creating HTML pages before you begin this module.
Using COM Components: In this module, you will use some of the COM components that come with Active Server Pages. You will learn how use components to rotate Web advertisement banners, detect browser capabilities, and add database functionality to your Web pages. Before beginning this module, it is recommended that you have some experience with JScript or Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript).
Writing Your Own Components: In this module, you can create your own COM components, in Microsoft Visual Basic or Java™ component for financial calculations. For this module, you must have the 32-bit version of either Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition, Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition, or a later version, or Visual J++ 1.1, or later, installed, and you should have some experience with Visual Basic or Java programming.

This section does not contain information on:

General language information and topics on writing ASP scripts; see Active Server Pages.
Language reference pages; see Built-in ASP Objects.