What is an ASP page?

While WWW(World Wide Web) was the static world on the web, web server had just the function of replying demanded files. After CGI(Common Gateway Interface)has been released, static web changed to dynamic world. CGI start up web server side program, and provid basic interface which recieved the result from web server. Concept of CGI is working well, so CGI is still important technique in today.

Even though web became dynamic world, there had still problems. One was building one web application needs to creat many CGI. CGI is a software that is working on different memory space to web serive, and made by Perl or C program language. Therefore, changing web page layout which contained CGI needed to rewrite programs.

Because CGI became very common in this area, there were a lot of burden on the server side. Due to those circumstances, Microsoft provided one solution which is Active Server Pages.

ASP has some advantages compared to CGI. One is that ASP is using text base script languages, so it is easy to learn. Next, ASP can work on the same memory space of web service, so it will work so speedy. In addition to that, it is possible to expand the function by using COM component. In ASP, we call COM component as ActiveX server component. For example, Microsoft support connecting database by using component, and the center of this component is ActiveX Data Object(ADO). Connecting database is essential for web application, so this component is very important. Finally, those components have no relationship with user interface, so we do not need to compile component for changing the view. Those advantages are way above techniques than CGI.

An ASP page is any file located on your Web server that has the extension .ASP. This special extension distinguishes an ASP page from a normal HTML file that ends with the extension .HTML or .HTM.

When a user visits a Web site and requests a normal HTML file, the Web server simply retrieves the file from the computer's hard drive or memory and sends the file to the user's browser. The browser interprets the HTML content of the file and the visitor sees the Web page.

When someone requests a normal HTML page, the Web server doesn't care about the content of the file. The Web server's role is to simply retrieve the appropriate file without processing it. All the work of interpreting the content of the file is performed by the user's Web browser.

On the other hand, when someone requests an ASP page, the Web server takes a more active role. Before the file is sent to the user's Web browser, it is first processed by the Web server. The Web server interprets and executes any scripts in an ASP page before sending it to the user's browser.