ASP (Active Server Pages), is a window based technology developed by Microsoft Corporation which enables developers to create web pages that can be used with Web Browsers, after it is being executed on a Microsoft (IIS) Internet Information Server on a Windows’ NT computer, PWM (Personal Web Manager) on the computer. ASP is dedicated to the creation of dynamic web pages.

An ASP page incorporates a variety of web technologies including VBScript, JavaScript, Jscript and ADO (Active-X Data Objects). ASP requires both a server and Web Browser. ASP makes database transactions easier.

An ASP document can contain server side scripts – scripts that are interpreted and executed by the server rather than the browser, which is located on the client computer. One advantage of using the server as a base for applications and scripts is that the user’s computer is free of access programs and applets. Another benefit is that the server is often more powerful computer than the client. Perhaps the most important advantage is that ASP pages are run on the server, and after processing these pages are completely HTML. As a result most browsers available today will be able to display the entire content of the ASP pages. Even browsers that do not support scripting can handle the ASP documents.

ASP documents can even include predefined objects that enable us to transfer information between the browser and the server. It includes six built in objects that enable interaction between browser and the server. The Request and Response objects handle requests and responses to requests. The Server object enables us to create new objects, convert text to HTML, and perform other common tasks. Application manages information about the active application, and Session manages sessions, the time when the applications are active. The ObjectContext object is used with MTS. ASP also includes Active Server Pages Scripting Objects (Dictionary, FileSystemObject and TextStream) in a library named Microsoft Scripting Runtime.

ASP also supports Active Server Components, which are COM components provided by Microsoft and other companies.

Electronic Commerce is an increasingly important component of the Web. Because ASP supports the use of SQL queries, we can use ASP pages to gather information using interactive input forms