What are Active Server Pages (ASP) on IIS?

Posted: 3.4.1998 17.45.50 (EET/GMT+2)

Microsoft has a technology called Active Server Pages or ASP. This technology allows you to create dynamic content in IIS applications without writing ISAPI extensions.

The ASP technology is included with the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack and runs as part of IIS.

A basic ASP page looks like this:

<HTML>
<BODY>

<%
Response.Write "Hello from ASP"
%>

</BODY>
</HTML>

Notice how the special markers <% %> are used to indicate script code that runs. You can use for instance Notepad to write this file. Then save it with a .asp extension in your web root:

C:\InetPub\wwwroot\default.asp

When requested through the browser (such as http://localhost/default.asp), IIS executes the script on the server and returns the generated HTML.

You can also access request data and server variables:

<%
name = Request.QueryString("name")
Response.Write "Hello " & name
%>

ASP supports VBScript by default, and JScript can also be used.

ASP looks like an interesting technology, and show also allow accessing COM objects, too for business object access. It also saves development time by not needing a separate complication process.