Introduction to ASP and ASP.NET

ASP is a Microsoft technology, the full form of which is Active Server Pages (ASP). This program can only run inside Internet Information Services (IIS) which is available as part of various Windows operating systems.

ASP is a server side scripting language (like PHP) which is used for ASP web hosting. However, since it is owned by Microsoft, ASP hosting can only be used with Windows operating systems. An ASP file is much like an HTML file but can also contain XML, scripts, and text. Any scripts contained in a particular ASP file are executed on the server. Thus, even if the browser that is displaying the ASP file does not support scripting, the ASP file can still be used as execution is done on the server side.

Understanding ASP

ASP is better understood by knowing the difference between ASP files and HTML files. If any browser requests an HTML file, the server returns that file on its own. However, if a browser requests an ASP file, Internet Information Services routes that request to the ASP engine. This ASP engine then reads the ASP file, going through it line by line and finally executes the scripts contained in the file. The ASP file is then converted into regular HTML and finally returned to the browser. Essentially, this is how ASP web hosting works.

What Is ASP Used For

With ASP you can:

• Add content dynamically to a web page or edit and change existing content
• Customize web pages to make them individualistic for different users.
• Simpler and quicker to use than other languages such as CGI and Perl
• Ensure utmost security because the codes are executed on the server and cannot be seen on the browser
• You can also reduce traffic problems on your network through expert ASP programming.

What Is ASP.NET

Most people think that ASP.NET (also known as ASP+) is an upgraded version of ASP. However, ASP+ is a web application framework that enables webmasters to create and build various kinds of web applications and web pages that are dynamic in nature. Since it is built on the Common Language Runtime (CLR) principle, ASP.NET codes can be written in any language that is .NET supported, which includes Visual Basic, J#, C#, and JScript .NET.

Thus, with the help of ASP hosting that uses the ASP language and the framework of ASP.NET, web programmers can efficiently create powerful websites that are dynamic and multi-featured.

Links

• ASP.net Web Hosting
• ASP.net Official Website