ASP means Active Server Pages and it is a server-side scripting implemented by Microsoft. This script is executed and parsed by the server so that when an ASP containing page is requested by users, the server will send the code after parsing it. This means that the code used in the ASP will never reach the browser. Basically this is completely the opposite of JavaScript.
The good thing is that ASP scripts doesn’t need a very extensive knowledge about programming, although some HTML is necessary and the only thing you will have to install is IIS (Internet Information Services), but this is included in some versions of Microsoft operating systems like Windows 2000 or Windows XP professional edition. If your operating system does not contain IIS you can download it in the Microsoft main site, but remember this is a Microsoft product and will not work in other Operating systems.
ASP code is used for a wide range of web tinkers like edit dynamically, modify the web content by addition or removal, query databases and access to them, connect to other computers in a remote location, file managing, images etc… basically it can be used for everything.
The best thing about ASP is the security. As all the code is parsed in the server side, it is not shown to the client or the browser and this way it can not be edited or copied for plagiarism. Also, even though the files may have an .asp output, they are returned in HTML and they are compatible with any browser. As the .asp files and html code can be merged in the same file, it is not necessary to separate the files created with ASP from other files and the web browser will not notice the difference between ASP and HTML at all. If you code it right, you can even make that the output is all HTML and then, the web browser will not even know that there is an ASP code in the server side.
The worst thing of ASP is that it is a Microsoft licensed technology so if you haven’t got a Windows Operating System you won’t be able to use it or download it. Even though it comes with some operating systems, it can not be considered open source because you will have to buy the product to get it.
Some companies were not happy about this technology being available only for Microsoft environments and thus, they have developed some versions of ASP like iASP and ChiliASP which are intended to use the technology in other web servers rather than Microsoft’s IIS. This has made the technology more extended to the general public as it is now possible to run it in an Apache server which is by far the most popular kind of servers around. Note that these versions of ASP are not licensed or supported by Microsoft, but there is a large community which will help new users in this technology.
Ref. http://www.amecomputers.com/what-is-asp.html
