What is ASP?

In the dim and distant past, web developers wishing to create more than just static displays of information turned to CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and Perl to introduce some sort of interaction to their pages. While this approach worked (and indeed, many sites still use it today), CGI was not by any means fast and the quest for an alternative means to create a page dynamically continued. ISAPI came and went – primarily because it required more knowledge to create a dynamic filter than web programmers were prepared to learn. Finally came web scripting languages and with them Microsoft's Active Server Pages: a server-side scripting technology for building web pages that are both dynamic and interactive.

An Active Server Page itself is simply a text file script with the extension .asp containing HTML, client- and server-side script. The implementation behind the ASP page was created by Microsoft and intended as an open technology server-side framework, giving web developers the freedom to develop dynamic web sites using information accessed from the many COM-compliant data sources available to them.

The syntax and grammar of ASP is easy to comprehend, and yet powerful enough to:

• support some interaction between page user and server

• allow web page access to databases and directory services

• incorporate and make use of high-powered COM components

It's also server-based, and therefore browser-independent, leaving you only the problems of which cross-browser client-side script and stylesheet you want to use.

ASP Programming.

Jahoopa does do ASP programming Writing ASP pages is straightforward: The static content of the page is created using HTML and text. We can also use standard HTML forms to question the client and, using ASP, create a page that incorporates their answers into the text. This is the simplest form of client-server interactivity using ASP.  We make calls to one or several of the ASP intrinsic objects to create the dynamic element of the page. ASP provides a set of intrinsic objects – Response, Request, Application, Server and Session – that allow us to access information about the request being made of the server, as well as the response that the server will send.We also have access to the functionality of our standard scripting languages (VBScript, JScript and JavaScript) and the scripting objects they expose.

Does Jahoopa support ASP?

Yes, Jahoopa Self-Service Websites offers the option of "Sun Chili! Soft ASP for Linux". The fee for adding this to your hosting account is $15 per month with our Basic and Deluxe hosting plans. The Active Server Pages option is included for free with our Commerce and Professional hosting plans. To request this option, please click here to email us or contact the our Help Center or Help Desk.

Note: We do not do any debugging of ASP pages that you place on our servers. You should be an experienced programmer before attempting to use ASP.

Where can I find documentation on ASP?

Note: We do not do any debugging of ASP pages that you place on our servers. You should be an experienced programmer before attempting to use ASP.

For detailed documentation on Active Server Pages, please refer to Sun Chili! Soft ASP for Linux and their Top 15 Knowledgebase Articles.

****Links to Other ASP Help Sites****

Beginner:
http://learnasp.com

Expert:
http://www.ultimateasp.com
http://www.asp-dev.com

ASP with MySQL resources:
http://www.chilisoft.com/kb/top15kbarticles.asp
http://www.dwam.net/mysql/asp_myodbc.asp