Microsoft® Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side scripting environment that you can use to create and run dynamic, interactive, high-performance Web server applications. When your scripts run on the server rather than on the client, your Web server does all the work involved in generating the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages that you send to browsers. You need not worry whether a browser can process your pages: your Web server does all the processing for it.
You need only a working knowledge of HTML to begin using ASP. Take a look at A Brief History of Hypertext to better understand ASP's place in the evolution of the Web, as well as the powerful set of features ASP provides.
Active Server Pages is a feature of and can be used with the following Web servers:
- Microsoft Internet Information Server version 3.0 on Windows NT Server
- Microsoft Peer Web Services Version 3.0 on Windows NT Workstation
- Microsoft Personal Web Server on Windows 95
An ASP script begins to run when a browser requests an .asp file from your Web server. Your Web server then calls ASP, which reads through the requested file from top to bottom, executes any commands, and sends an HTML page to the browser.
