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Why Active Server Pages?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to give IT managers, Webmasters, and anyone involved in Web development an introduction to Active Server Pages (ASP) and to shed light on the buzz that has spread through the Web application development world. Read on to learn how you and your organization can take advantage of this technology to cost-effectively develop dynamic Web applications and find out why ASP is quickly becoming the de facto standard for Web-based application development.

This paper explains why using Active Server Pages (ASP) and the ASP framework as a platform for Web applications makes sense to corporate IT management. It also explains how Chili!Soft ASP supports both the tactical needs and strategic goals of IT management.

In this paper:

·   Marketplace Background  

ASP and the Industry

The Active Server Pages Platform  

·   The World Before ASP

HTML and Static Web Pages

Scripting Languages and Dynamic Web Pages

CGI and Interactive Web Sites

APIs and Interactive Web Sites

·   The ASP Value Proposition

·   Chili!Soft ASP

The Chili!Soft ASP Value Proposition

Chili!Soft ASP in the Future

·   Company and Product Overview

About ASP

About Chili!Soft

ASP Overview

More and more organizations are turning to Web-based applications to provide fast, easy access to dynamic enterprise data, both through internal intranets and the public Internet. In order to derive real power and value from Web-based applications, they need to be interactive, easy-to-use, informative, and above all, useful.

The associated costs with creating these kinds of interactive Web-based business applications can be daunting when considering the scarcity of skilled programmers and potential restructuring costs. In order to be competitive and control costs, IT managers need tools that enable them to:

·   Develop applications quickly and easily

·   Use existing developer resources

·   Run applications in cross-platform computing environments

ASP gives organizations these capabilities. As the demand for rapid turnaround on projects grows, more and more developers are turning to ASP to quickly develop and deploy interactive Web-based applications.

What is ASP?

Active Server Pages (ASP) is an open, compile-free application environment that combines scripting, HTML, custom server components, and robust database publishing to create dynamic Web-based business applications.

ASP was born in November 1996 when Microsoft announced its design of an Active Platform in support of the growing popularity of the Internet. Since that time, the ASP community has grown to include close to 1,000,000 ASP developers, over 500 ASP components and applications, and approximately 25,000 ASP-based Web sites. Chili!Soft has been distributing their fully compatible ASP solution since June 1997.

The World Before ASP

In order to understand the building momentum behind the ASP movement, one needs to explore the world before ASP. Prior to ASP, developers had two choices: they could either create static Web pages using HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), a coding system that turns plain text into graphic Web pages, or they could create dynamic pages using Perl or C, complex programming languages that create server-side scripting.

HTML and Static Web Pages

Initially, most Web sites were used to publish information. Typical content included items like company profiles, press releases, annual reports, product brochures, etc. HTML tags were used to tell the user’s Web browser (the client side) how to display static information stored on a computer in HTML files.

For example, if a user types a URL, the Web browser looks for the Web site, finds the Web server on the Internet, and requests that the page be sent to the Web browser. After the Web server finds the page, it sends it to the Web browser. The Web browser reads the HTML tags in the page and converts them into a formatted page. In this respect, HTML is a display language that displays static pages. There is not a way for the user to send information back to the Web server.

Scripting Languages and Dynamic Web Pages

In order for Web sites to be dynamic and gather information from the user, developers needed a more powerful tool, one that enabled them to write code alongside HTML and have that code executed when a page is requested. Client-side scripting, such as VBScript or JavaScript, is such a tool. It can be used to do simple interactive tasks such as verifying that a user had entered all the necessary fields prior to sending an order to a Web server. The browser executes client-side scripts after the page has been received from the server. While client-side scripts enable the dynamic flow of information between the browser and the server, they have two main weaknesses:

·   The source code can be viewed from a user’s browser and could be stolen.

·   Client-side scripts can only run on browsers that support the scripting language the developer used.

CGI and Interactive Web Sites

Then an alternative called server-side scripting emerged. CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a computer program written in Perl or C that enables the Web server to talk to other applications before displaying a file in a user’s browser. CGI translates the information coming from the user for the Web server, then saves it to a text file or database. Most server-side tools like CGI must be compiled and associated with the appropriate Web pages. While interactive, there are several limitations associated with CGI:

·   Requires Web developers with knowledge of Perl or C.

·   Results in inefficient processing since every new request to a CGI creates a new process on the server and opens a new copy of the CGI application. Having multiple copies running concurrently can result in lengthy response times, especially to high traffic sites.

·   Leads to longer development times since CGI developers cannot take advantage of visual development interfaces like Visual Basic.

·   Raises security concerns in that by running on the server side, CGI opens up your computer to potential fraud.

·   Not all Internet service providers (ISPs) host CGI scripts because they don’t want to take the risk of a poorly written CGI code crashing the server and every site hosted on that server, or risk performance problems.

APIs and Interactive Web Sites

Another server-side scripting tool, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) is in the mix as well. Like CGI, APIs allow the Web server to communicate with other applications running on the server machine, but they do so without the inefficient processing risks. However, APIs still require complex interfaces to the Web server and are difficult to create and maintain. In the final analysis, few organizations can afford the time and expense associated with using highly skilled developers to create engaging Web sites with CGI or APIs.

The ASP Value Proposition

ASP enables developers and IT managers to:

·   Reduce development costs by leveraging existing developer expertise.

·   Combine developers of all levels onto one Web application project.

·   Effectively allocate scarce internal development resources.

·   Reduce development times through rapid and easy application development with widely available RAD tools and scripting languages.

·   Operate in an open development environment by combining scripting languages, COM and Java objects, and RAD tools into one application.

·   Easily support user-driven database queries and publish legacy databases to the Web.

·   Free themselves of proprietary standards of development.

·   Execute business logic on the server and produce consistent results regardless of the browser used by your user.

·   Develop secure applications.

Chili!Soft ASP

While ASP is a powerful tool, there is one limitation: until 1997, ASP applications could only be developed and deployed on Windows NT servers using Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS). This meant that organizations with a Web server other than Microsoft IIS could not take advantage of ASP for quick and easy Web development. It also meant that ISVs that had created powerful ASP applications could not deploy them for clients that weren’t on IIS. Developers either had to learn a new language or rewrite their existing ASP applications in some other complex language.

Chili!Soft ASP has been bringing the power of ASP to non-Windows platforms and Web servers since 1997. Chili!Soft ASP enables developers to use the same ASP code on multiple Web servers and multiple platforms. Chili!Soft ASP is currently available on Sun Solaris, IBM-AIX, Linux, HP-UX, and Windows NT.

The Chili!Soft ASP Value Proposition

Chili!Soft ASP brings advantages of a superior Web technology to all companies regardless of their choice of Web server or operating environment.

Chili!Soft ASP gives developers and IT managers:

·   Cross-platform portability – applications can be developed on Windows NT or other servers and deployed on multiple servers.

·   A scalable solution as applications can be ported to UNIX servers.

·   Enables the deployment of ASP-based applications on other servers.

Chili!Soft ASP in the Future

The Internet has experienced a staggering growth and is quickly becoming the application development environment of choice. Better development tools will continue to emerge for creating robust Web applications. As these tools and the technology evolves, Chili!Soft ASP and Active Server Pages will grow in popularity by providing an open framework, ease of development, and powerful capabilities to developers of all skill sets.

Company and Product Overview

About ASP

ASP is an open, compile-free Web application environment that combines scripting, HTML, custom server components and robust database publishing to create dynamic Web-based business applications. With ASP, developers can build browser-independent Web solutions and publish legacy databases to the Web using tools such as Microsoft’s Visual InterDev™ and FrontPage2000™, Macromedia™ Drumbeat™, NetObjects ScriptBuilder™, or Sybase™ PowerSite. ASP is widely known for accommodating developers of varying skill sets and expertise, and for allowing corporate IT managers to more effectively allocate scarce developer resources. There are more than 1,000,000 ASP developers, over 500 companies producing ASP components and applications, and approximately 25,000 public Web sites using ASP.

About Chili!Soft

Chili!Soft, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW), is a provider of enabling technologies and applications for Active Server Pages. Chili!Soft's award-winning flagship product, Chili!Soft ASP, extends the ASP framework to major Web servers and operating systems including Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, Hewlett Packard HP-UX, and Linux. Chili!Soft was incorporated in 1997 with headquarters in Bellevue, Washington. For more information about the company, please visit the Chili!Soft Web site at http://www.chilisoft.com or call (425) 957-1122.

Copyright 2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Legal Notice.