ASP Primer: An Introduction

Use these bookmarks
to jump around the tutorial:

[What
Is ASP?]

[How
Can I Use ASP?]

[What
Will I Learn In This Series?]

[What’s
Next?]

So, you want to know
more about ASP, huh? Well, you’ve picked a good place to start. This Primer
Series should give you a good basic understanding of what ASP is all about and
get you started on your way to creating your own dynamic web sites.

What
Is ASP?

ASP is an acronym
for Microsoft’s Active Server Pages. Now, ASP may seem like
a bit of an odd name but, believe it or not, some real thought went into coming
up with the name.

The reason that
Microsoft named the technology Active Server Pages is because it very basically
describes what the technology is all about:

1. The Active refers
   to the fact that the HTML is created dynamically by your ASP pages.

2. The Server refers
   to the fact that this process is done on the server-side and not the
   client-side. An example of a client-side technology would be JavaScript which is
   a language that actually runs in the browser. Server-side technologies like ASP
   run on the server and send out simple HTML to the browser.

3. Then there is Pages.
   I don’t think this one needs any explaining.

ASP is referred to as a
server technology. This means that it is technically not a programming language,
however, you will probably hear ASP referred to as a language from time to time.
When working in ASP you will actually write ASP in cooperation with either
JavaScript or VBScript, which are the actual programming languages that are
available to you. The distinction between a server technology and a programming
language can be very confusing, especially to beginning developers. So, for now,
don’t worry about the distinction too much. It will become more apparent as you
learn about ASP.

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How
Can I Use ASP?

There are probably a
million and one uses that you could come up with for ASP. ASP is great for
creating almost any kind of dynamic web content from discussion groups to
shopping carts. Here are some examples of common ASP applications:

Personal uses:

• A randomized thought of
  the day on your home page.

• A dynamically generated
  calendar of events for your kids.

• A web based movie
  exchange application for you and your friends.

• A guestbook form that
  stores your guests’ information in a database.

• A personal greeting for
  your visitors.

Business Uses:

• Shopping Carts

• Discussion Groups

• Personal Greetings

• Client account
  information

• Secured sections of your
  site

• Web-based cost estimate
  configuration applications

These are obviously only
a small portion of the applications that are possible. ASP is ideal for
simplifying tasks that would otherwise be very cumbersome or impossible in HTML.
It also makes possible the ability to design pages that can easily be maintained
by you or your clients.

Be creative. Think of as
many ways as you can to improve your website and see if ASP can bring your ideas
to life.

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What Will I Learn In This Series?

In this series we will
cover most of the building blocks you will need to get comfortable and be
productive with ASP. Along the way we’ll give you ideas for projects to try on
your personal site that will help you practice what you have learned. We will
also recommend some books that might be helpful reference pieces.

Here are just some of
the topics that we will be covering in future editions of this ASP Primer
series:

• What you need to get
  started

• Choosing a language

• Outputting HTML from
  your ASP page

• Connecting to a database

• Getting stuff out of a
  database

• Putting stuff in a
  database

• Using forms with ASP

• Including other pages
  and/or files in your pages

• Using cookies

• Randomizing your content

• Where to take your new
  found knowledge

Now, this is the short
list for the series. I actually expect the series to total about 14 segments. I
sincerely hope that what you learn here will make your web life much better and
your web sites much more exciting.

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What’s Next?

Now that you know what
this Primer Series is all about we’ll try to get you up and running with your
first ASP page in the next segment.

In the next part of this series
we will:

• Show you what you need
  to create an ASP page

• Learn how an ASP page
  actually works

• Create your first ASP
  page

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