Glossary of Computer Science and Engineering Part 1 - Active Server Pages (ASP)

Glossary of Computer Science and Engineering Part 1 - Active Server Pages (ASP) | HackThatCORE

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Many users think of Web pages as being like pages in a book, stored intact on the server, ready to be flipped through with the mouse. Increasingly, however, Web pages are dynamic—they do not actually exist until the user requests them, and their content is determined largely by what the user requests. This demand for greater interactivity and customization of Web content tends to fall first on the server (see client - server computing and W eb server ) and on “server side” programs to provide such functions as database access. One major platform for developing Web services is Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP). In ASP programmers work with built-in objects that represent basic Web page functions. The RecordSet object can provide access to a variety of databases; the Response object can be invoked to display text in response to a user action; and the Session object provides variables that can be used to store information about previous user actions such as adding items to a shopping cart (see also cookies ). Control of the behavior of the objects within the Web page and session was originally handled by code written in a scripting language such as VBScript and embedded within the HTML text (see html and VBS cript ). However, ASP .NET, based on Microsoft’s latest Windows class libraries (see M icrosoft . net ) and introduced in 2002, allows Web services to be written in full-fledged programming languages such as Visual Basic .NET and C#, although in-page scripting can still be used. This can provide several advantages: access to software development tools and methodologies available for established programming languages, better separation of program code from the “presentational” (formatting) elements of HTML, and the speed and security associated with compiled code. ASP .NET also emphasizes the increasingly prevalent Extensible Markup Language (see xml ) for organizing data and sending those data between objects using Simple Object Access Protocol (see soap ). Although ASP .NET was designed to be used with Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) under Windows, the open-source Mono project (sponsored by Novell) implements a growing subset of the .NET classes for use on UNIX and Linux platforms using a C# compiler with appropriate user interface, graphics, and database libraries. An alternative (or complementary) approach that has become popular in recent years reduces the load on the Web server by avoiding having to resend an entire Web page when only a small part actually needs to be changed.

References:

• Bellinaso, Marco. ASP .NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem— Design—Solution. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, 2006.
• Liberty, Jesse, and Dan Hurwitz. Programming ASP .NET. 3rd ed. Sebastapol, Calif.: O’Reilly, 2005.
• McClure, Wallace B., et al. Beginning Ajax with ASP .NET. India- napolis: Wiley Publishing, 2006.
• Mono Project. Available online. URL: http://www.mono-project. com/Main_Page. Accessed April 10, 2007.