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Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's first
server-side In the client–server model, server-side refers to programs and operations that run on the server. This is in contrast to client-side programs and operations which run on the client. General concepts Typically, a server is a computer applicati ...
scripting language and engine for dynamic web pages. It was first released in December 1996, before being superseded in January 2002 by ASP.NET.


History

Initially released as an add-on to Internet Information Services (IIS) via the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack (1996), it is included as a component of Windows Server (since the initial release of Windows 2000 Server). There have been three versions of ASP, each introduced with different versions of IIS: * ASP 1.0 was released in December 1996 as part of IIS 3.0 * ASP 2.0 was released in September 1997 as part of IIS 4.0 * ASP 3.0 was released in November 2000 as part of IIS 5.0 ASP 2.0 provides six built-in
objects Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ai ...
: Application, ASPError, Request, Response, Server, and Session. Session object, for example, represents a session that maintains the state of variables from page to page. The
Active Scripting Active Scripting (formerly known as ActiveX Scripting) is the technology used in Windows to implement component-based scripting support. It is based on OLE Automation (part of COM) and allows installation of additional scripting engines in the for ...
engine's support of the Component Object Model enables ASP
website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and W ...
s to access functionality in compiled libraries such as
dynamic-link libraries Dynamic-link library (DLL) is Microsoft's implementation of the shared library concept in the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems. These libraries usually have the file extension DLL, OCX (for libraries containing ActiveX controls), or ...
. ASP 3.0 does not differ greatly from ASP 2.0 but it does offer some additional enhancements such as Server.Transfer method, Server.Execute method, and an enhanced ASPError object. ASP 3.0 also enables buffering by default and optimized the engine for better performance. ASP was supported until 14 January 2020 on Windows 7. The use of ASP pages will be supported on Windows 8 for a minimum of 10 years from the Windows 8 release date. ASP is currently supported in all available versions of IIS.Source

Microsoft


Architecture

ASP uses server-side scripting, scripting on the server to generate content that is sent to the client's web browser via HTTP response. The ASP interpreter reads and executes all script code between <% and %> tags, the result of which is content generation. These scripts were written using
VBScript VBScript (''" Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition"'') is an Active Scripting language developed by Microsoft that is modeled on Visual Basic. It allows Microsoft Windows system administrators to generate powerful tools for managing comput ...
, JScript, or PerlScript. The @Language directive, the syntax or server configuration can be used to select the language. In the example below, Response.Write Now() is in an
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...
page; it would be dynamically replaced by the current time of the server. Web pages with the ''.asp'' filename extension use ASP, although some web sites disguise their choice of scripting language for security purposes by using the more common ''.htm'' or ''.html'' extensions. Pages with the ''.aspx'' extension use compiled ASP.NET; however, ASP.NET pages may still include some ASP scripting. The introduction of ASP.NET led to use of the term ''Classic ASP'' for the original technology. Sun Java System ASP (formerly ChiliSoft ASP) was a popular and reportedly complete emulator, but it has been discontinued.


The Server object

The server object allows connections to databases (ADO), filesystem, and use of components installed on the server. <% Dim oAdoCon, oAdoRec, oAdoStm, oCdoCon, oCdoMsg, oSciDic, oSciFsm, oMswAdr Set oAdoCon = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Set oAdoRec = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset") Set oAdoStm = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Stream") Set oCdoCon = Server.CreateObject("CDO.Configuration") Set oCdoMsg = Server.CreateObject("CDO.Message") Set oSciDic = Server.CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary") Set oSciFsm = Server.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set oMswAdr = Server.CreateObject("MSWC.Swingbridge") %>


The Application object

This object stores global variables, which are variables accessible to all users. <% Application("Ali") = "My ASP Application" Response.Write "Welcome to " & Server.HTMLEncode(Application("Ali")) & "!" %>


The Session object

Stores variables accessible only to a single visitor, which are local variables. <% If Len(Request.QueryString("name")) > 0 Then Session("name") = Request.QueryString("name") End If Response.Write "Welcome " & Server.HTMLEncode(Session("name")) & "!" %> The session object is file based and multiple concurrent read and/or write requests will be blocked and processed in turn.


The Err object

Allows the management and fixing of non-fatal errors. <% On Error Resume Next Response.Write 1 / 0 ' Division by zero If Err.Number <> 0 Then Response.Write "Error Code: " & Server.HTMLEncode(Err.Number) & "
" Response.Write "Error Source: " & Server.HTMLEncode(Err.Source) & "
" Response.Write "Error Description: " & Server.HTMLEncode(Err.Description) & "
" Err.Clear End If %>


See also

* ASP.NET * Template processor * Comparison of web template engines * Jakarta Server Pages * PHP * Common Gateway Interface


References


External links


ASP on MSDN

Microsoft Support for ASP on Windows

Classic ASP Applications on IIS 7.0 and IIS 7.5 Overview

Primitive Classic ASP Framework (XML, JSON, BENCODE)
{{Web interfaces Microsoft server technology