What can you do with ASP?

• You can access any database or data and return it to a Web browser, using SQL to perform queries
• You are able to create pages that can dynamically edit, change or add any content of a Web page
• ASP can create Web pages that are customised to make them more useful for individual users
• You can dynamically respond to information submitted or user queries from HTML forms
• ASP has advantages over CGI and Perl, because it's pages are simpler to code and faster to access
• By being smart with your ASP programming you are able to minimize network congestion
• You have greater security because ASP code can not be viewed from the browser, ASP becomes HTML in the Web browser
• ASP files are always returned as normal HTML, and as such they can be viewed in any browser that supports HTML

What does ASP stand for and what makes it work?

• ASP is a Microsoft Technology
• ASP stands for Active Server Pages
• ASP is a programming language that runs inside Microsoft's IIS server
• IIS stands for Internet Information Services
• IIS is free with Windows 2000
• IIS is also free with the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack
• This Option Pack can be downloaded from Microsoft
• Personal Web Server (PWS) is a smaller - but fully functional - version of IIS
• You can find PWS on your Windows 95/98 CD

• You must have Windows NT 4.0 or later to run IIS
• You must have Windows 95 or later to run PWS
• Sun ChiliASP has been developed to run ASP in a UNIX environment
• Another technology that runs ASP outside of Windows is InstantASP

• An ASP file is just the same as an HTML file
• You can have HTML, XML, text, links, and other scripts inside an ASP file
• The scripts that make an ASP file work are executed on the server
• The most common scripting in ASP is VBscript
• The ASP file extension is ".asp"

• ASP is a server-side scripting technology, running scripts on the server, as distinct from client-side script technology
• A server returns a simple HTML file when it is requested from a server, nothing is altered in it
• When a browser requests an ASP file, IIS passes the request to the ASP engine
• This ASP engine executes the scripts in the ASP file by reading them line by line
• After all that, the ASP file is returned to the browser as plain HTML - none of the ASP can be seen

You can run ASP on your own PC without an external server. To do that, you must install Microsoft's Personal Web Server (PWS) or Internet Information Server (IIS) on your PC.

If you are serious about using ASP, you should have at least Windows 98, Second Edition. 

If you are really serious about using ASP, you should go for Windows 2000.

How to install PWS and run ASP on Windows 95

The first thing you should know is that Personal Web Server (PWS) is not shipped with Windows 95. To run ASP on Windows 95, you will have to download "Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack" from Microsoft.

Read about the "Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack" here, or go to the download page here.

Neither Personal Web Server (PWS) nor Internet Information Services (IIS) is shipped with Windows NT. To run ASP on Windows NT, you will have to download "Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack" from Microsoft.

Read about the "Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack" here, or go to the download page here.

1. Open the Add-ons folder on your Windows 98 CD, find the PWS folder and run the setup.exe file.
2. An Inetpub folder will be created on your hard drive. Open it and find the wwwroot folder.
3. Create a new folder, like "MyWeb", under wwwroot.
4. Use a text editor to write some ASP code, save the file as "test1.asp" in the "MyWeb" folder.
5. Make sure your Web server is running.
6. Open your browser and type in "http://localhost/MyWeb/test1.asp", to view your first ASP page.

Personal Web Server (PWS) is not even included with Windows Me. Read article from Microsoft

1. From your Start Button, go to Settings, and Control Panel
2. In the Control Panel window select Add/Remove Programs
3. In the Add/Remove window select Add/Remove Windows Components
4. In the Wizard window check Internet Information Services, click OK
5. An Inetpub folder will be created on your hard drive
6. Open the Inetpub folder, and find a folder named wwwroot
7. Create a new folder, like "MyWeb", under wwwroot.
8. Use a text editor to write some ASP code, save the file as "test1.asp" in the "MyWeb" folder.
9. Make sure your Web server is running.
10. Open your browser and type in "http://localhost/MyWeb/test1.asp", to view your first ASP page.

PWS or IIS on Windows 2000

IIS comes standard with Windows 2000. Nothing needs to be done to install it.

ASP is part of our Web development training programs that teach you how to build dynamic database driven Web sites.

Check out our course details.