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Starting with ASP: Part 2

So, now that you can recognise ASP when you meet it, what is supplied with ASP to make your life easier? ASP (and by ASP I mean both ASP and the VBScript language) come with a number of components supplied ready to use. In ASP 1 there were five of these components (in ASP 2 there are some more, but these five are still the core set) and full details of the components can be found in the ASP roadmap provided with the Microsoft web servers, however, so you don't get bored here are the five components.

Ad Rotator	This can be used to rotate "adverts". This should really only be thought of as a toy and is not really suitable for a serious commercial site, unless you put a lot of extra work in (for example, the ASP needed to run this site makes NO use of the Ad Rotator). The Ad Rotator will display images ("adverts") on a specific schedule, so is in fact a useful tool if you want to present users of your site with different images, to keep them interested.

Browser Capabilities	There is a component that will allow you to determine which browser type is being used to view your pages; you could, based on this information, generate pages for a specific browser type. Sound like a nice idea? Well just hold on a few seconds as there are some problems you should be aware of before you use this component. All of the information that you have access to is based on the Browscap.ini file. This is a look up where ASP goes to say, "I have this type of browser, so what can it do". The problem is that browser software is one of the most moving targets on the internet. In a short space of time both Microsoft and Netscape have produced browsers up to version 4; further, every now and again a new browser peaks above the horizon, like Opera (and now gecko!). Relying on this component means that you can only specifically target those browsers that it knows about. You have another problem, what if your ini file is different to your web hosts? There are also some philosophical arguments for ignoring the browser component. As a web application designer you should want your pages to be able to reach as wide an audience as possible. Therefore, should you really be tailoring parts of your site so specifically that you need to know this much about a browser? The safest thing is to ignore this component. If you really need to know what browser people are using there are safer techniques which don't rely on the browser cap file! (Look up request.servervariables for a sneak preview)

Database Access	Ah, the heart of ASP. This is the component that turns ASP from being a good thing into ASP being a great thing. The database access component lets you talk to any database that provides an ODBC interface, and most do. This whole site is based around databases and so gives you an idea of what ASP, in conjunction with databases can do.

Content Linking	The content linking component allows you to create a table of contents and then navigate around that quickly and easily. Essentially, you created an ordered list of your site, using the content linker you can then let people browse to the next document on you site, return to the previous document or jump to a specific one. This could be especially useful if you are trying to impose some kind of book order/feel on your site. The downside? You have to be RIGOROUS in keeping the file related to what pages you actually have on your site -- if they get out of step, you can find your site becomes very muddled indeed!

File Access	Lets you write to and update files on your system. NOTE these are text files that live under the web server, this component CAN NOT be used to access text files on the machine of browsers. The usefulness of this component depends on the application you are writing; you could use it store information about visitors to your site. You can also make use of it to automatically write static pages. So you could have ASP trigger a script that would update a load of ordinary .htm files. Even more clever would be to write a script that would generate new ASP scripts, but this can get very complicated. You'll have to think on the usefulness of this for yourself.

You now should have a feel for what ASP looks like, and also the components that you can make use of as standard. But do you want to write ASP VBs (or JavaScript) by hand? Not really, so ...