Standard web pages are static, they do not change until the webmaster updates them. A visitor’s web browser sends a request for a page to a website, and the server receives the request and sends the page back. Visitor “A” sees the same page as visitor “B” and so on. Active server pages use a different model. Visitors “A” and “B” may see different content after requesting the same webpage. This is works by including an additional step in the processing of the page request by the server. Instead of just sending the page, the server first runs all the ASP scripts embedded in the page’s HTML encoding. The ASP scripts are used to adapt the page for the visitor. ASP scripts can easily be inserted into existing HTML pages. Programmers who are familiar with scripting languages can quickly integrate active server pages into a website. Many complete scripts are freely available online and can be easily modified with a text editor. The ASP environment is integrated into Microsoft’s page Internet Information Service (IIS) as standard. There are also implementations from third-party manufacturers, e.g. for the Apache web server. The compatibility varies with the standard set by Microsoft.
