Introduction
Active Server Pages enables a web developer to replace static HTML pages with
'live data'. This information might be from a database, or simply by using cookie
information. But why does this have any relevance to a VB website? The reason
is Active Server Pages use Visual Basic as its main language (it also supports
Javascript), and therefore makes it easy for a VB developer to become an ASP
developer too. However, please note that this tutorial assumes some knowledge
of HTML.
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Changes in VB Web Tutorials
VB Web have introduced a few changes in its tutorials. The first are
these boxes, which provide information related to the topic being discussed,
but not essential to the tutorial! Next, is the highlighting of code.
Any new code has a light grey background. Code that you have come across
before, and hasn't changed has the standard white background.
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First, lets take a look behind the idea of Active Server Pages. Normally, when
someone visits a site, his browser sends a request for a certain file, such
as index.htm. The server will then return this file to the client PC, and it
will be displayed in the browser:
Active Server Pages, meanwhile, allow Visual Basic script to be processed on
the server before sending the file back to the client.
This has a number of benefits
- Unlike client-side code, such as the javascript that makes ad windows popup,
the browser does not need to understand VB - it doesn't even get to see it.
- The VB code can act on information passed to the page, such as from an internet
form or a querystring (this is data passed in the URL after the ? ... take
a look at this pages URL!). It can then use this information to display data,
or retrieve specific information from a database
- Only the smallest amount of data is sent to the client - only the HTML that
the page outputs is sent, not the VB code. This also means that the authors
VB programming work is protected from visitors!