Professional Active Server Pages 3.0

Book Overview

This book is about Active Server Pages 3.0, as included with Windows 2000. However, because ASP is now a core part of so many Web-oriented features within Windows, this book covers a far wider area than just how ASP works. ASP is maturing all the time to encompass more integration with other Windows services and software, and so there are many other areas that impinge directly on the use and performance of ASP.

In particular this involves the Windows operating system itself, including the new security features of Windows 2000, and the Internet server software that comes with Windows 2000 ? Internet Information Server (IIS). On top of this are the other less obvious services, which also have a direct or indirect effect on the way that ASP works. These include COM+, the various Internet service administration tools, and ? indirectly ? the many other services and installed software packages that either provide additional functionality to ASP, or which have interfaces that are available for use in ASP.

So, as well as chapters all about the roots of ASP, the base object structure, and how it's used, you'll also see chapters that demonstrate the many different ways that ASP integrates seamlessly with other software and services in Windows. One of the most obvious of these is access to data in a relational database or other type of data store (such as Active Directory), and you'll see several chapters devoted to these topics.

We'll also explore the intimate relationship between Internet Information Server and COM and the new COM+, and see how ASP has changed the way that it hosts and executes external components to provide better performance and scalability. This also affects the way that components are designed and built, and we'll be exploring this topic in some depth as well.

What's Great About this Book

• Covers Active Server Pages 3.0, as included with Microsoft Windows 2000 as well as VBScript 5.0 and JScript 5.0
• Explains the fundamentals of application development with ASP
• Extensive coverage of the new component services provided by COM+
• Explains how to add messaging and transactional support to your pages and components
• Includes chapters that demonstrate how ASP integrates seamlessly with relational databases, Active Directory and other Windows software and services

Who is this Book For?

This Wrox Professional guide is aimed at two categories of developer. Firstly, it is designed to satisfy the needs of those who are already well practiced in the skills of ASP and server-side Web application development. Secondly, it will be a useful and fast-track guide to those who are less familiar with ASP, but have a server-side Web application development background ? perhaps in the use of Perl, IDC, etc.

Summary of contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: ASP Fundamentals
Chapter 2: Handling Requests and Responses
Chapter 3: ASP Applications and Sessions
Chapter 4: Server Processes and the ASP Server Object
Chapter 5: The Scripting Runtime Library Objects
Chapter 6: Active Server Components
Chapter 7: Debugging and Error Handling
Chapter 8: ADO 2.5 Basics
Chapter 9: Connections, Commands And Procedures
Chapter 10: ASP and Data on the Client
Chapter 11: Working with XML Data
Chapter 12: Universal Data Access
Chapter 13: Components and Web Application Architecture
Chapter 14: COM, COM+ and ASP
Chapter 15: COM+ Applications
Chapter 16: ASP Script Components
Chapter 17: Building ASP Components in C++
Chapter 18: More C++ Component Issues
Chapter 19: ASP and Transacted Web Applications
Chapter 20: ASP and Message Queue Server
Chapter 21: Introducing ADSI and Active Directory
Chapter 22: ASP and Collaboration Data Objects for NT Server
Chapter 23: ASP, CDO and Exchange Server
Chapter 24: Securing Your Server
Chapter 25: Working With Certificates
Chapter 26: Optimizing ASP Performance
Chapter 27: Building Multiple Server Web Sites
An XML-Driven Newspaper Case Study
Appendix A: The ASP 3.0 Object Model
Appendix B: The Scripting Runtime Library Objects
Appendix C: Microsoft Server Components
Appendix D: Error Codes
Appendix E: The ADO 2.5 Object Model
Appendix F: ADO 2.5 Constants
Appendix G: Useful Information
Appendix H: P2P.WROX.COM