Investigation and Use of Active Server Pages in a Multi-platform Environment

Executive Summary

Active Server Pages (ASP) is the server-side execution programming environment that combines HTML pages, scripts, and Active-X server components. By combining these components, web page developers can easily create dynamic content and powerful Web-based applications.

Active Server Pages typically support scripts written in VBScript and JScript, although other scripting languages like JavaScript, Perl, Python and REXX are also supported. Active Server Pages also support ActiveX components developed in any language, including C++, Java, Visual Basic, and COBOL. Active Server Pages are similar to server-side includes, CGI scripts and programs, Java Servlets and JSP (Java Server Pages) found in other environments.

The research team will investigate the use and development of active server pages in several different environments. Initially, the researchers will be looking at standard Active Server Pages (ASP) developed with the programming language JavaScript for the Internet Information Server web server. JavaScript (or Jscript on Microsoft platforms) is one of the two languages typically used for developing Active Server Pages. As the research assistants become comfortable with developing ASPs using JavaScript, they will be expected to extend the development to other languages including C++, Java, and Perl.

The resulting ASPs will be tested in a variety of MS Windows platforms running the Internet Information Server and the Personal Web Server. The research team plans on porting ASPs to other environments including the Apache Web Server for NT and Apache Web Server for Linux. The researchers also plan on doing a comparative analysis of ASPs with Server-side Includes (SSI), CGI/Perl scripts, JSPs, and Java Servlets.

The results of this research will be published on the Faculty Advisor’s website (http://csc.ColumbusState.edu/summers) and incorporated into the course material for the NMHU courses: CS 456 / 556 – Internet Services and CS 463 /563 – Web Programming. These results will also be useful for NASA and educational institutions running web site.