Active Server Pages

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Active Server Pages (ASP) is the first server-side scripting language and engine for dynamic web pages thatMicrosoft developed. It was first released in December 1996, before being superseded in January 2002 byASP.NET.

ASPs are web pages containing, in addition to pure HTML code, scripts that will be executed by the server (server-side processing) to generate the HTML runtime code to be sent to the user's browser. This is usually defined as a dynamic web page. This way a user can show dynamic content (for example, extracts from databases that reside on the web server) and modify the look according to the rules programmed in the scripts – all without having to send the program code to the end user, who is only sent the result with considerable time and bandwidth savings. ASP technology includes some scripting languages for web programming within the so-called dynamic web paradigm.

History[]

Initially released as an add-on toInternet Information Services via theWindows NT 4.0 Option Pack (1996), it is included as a component ofWindows Server since the release ofWindows 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: Application, ASPError, Request, Response, Server, and Session. A Session object, for example, represents a session that maintains the state of variables from page to page. The Active Scripting engine's support of the Component Object Model enables ASP websites to access functionality in compiled libraries such as dynamic-link libraries.

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 optimizes the engine for better performance.

ASP was supported until January 14, 2020, onWindows 7. The use of ASP pages would be supported onWindows 8 for a minimum of 10 years from its release date.^[1] ASP is supported in all available versions of IIS as of 2025.^{[citation needed]}

Architecture[]

ASP uses server-side scripting to generate content that is sent to the client's web browser via an HTTP response. The ASP interpreter reads and executes all script code between the <% and %> tags, the result of which is content generation. These scripts were written usingVBScript,JScript, orPerlScript. The@Language directive, the <script language="language" runat="server" /> syntax, or server configuration can be used to select the language. In the example below,Response.Write Now() is in an HTML page; it would be dynamically replaced by the current time of the server.

Server side

Theserver'scurrenttime:<%Response.WriteNow()%>

Client side

The server's current time:8/11/2015 6:24:45 PM

Web pages with the.asp filename extension use ASP, although some websites disguise their choice of scripting language for security purposes by using the more common.htm or.html extensions. Pages with the.aspx extension use compiledASP.NET; however, ASP.NET pages may still include some ASP scripting. The introduction of ASP.NET led to the use of the term Classic ASP for the original technology.

See also[]

• ASP.NET

References[]

External links[]

• Active Server Pages (ASP) atMicrosoft Learn
  • ASP support in Windows
• Active Server Pages at Wikipedia