About ASP
Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1
Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side scripting environment that you can use to create dynamic and interactive Web pages, and to build powerful Web applications. When the server receives a request for an ASP file, it processes server-side script code contained in the file to build the HTML Web page that is sent to the browser. In addition to server-side script code, ASP files can contain HTML (including related client-side scripts) as well as calls to COM components that perform a variety of tasks, such as connecting to a database or processing business logic.
FrontPage Server Extensions does not support unicode content directory names or WebDAV. New FrontPage Server Extensions virtual servers should be assigned to the MSSharePointPool application pool. Also, do not make changes to the MSSharePointPool application pool configuration.
Note
If you have a Web site that uses Sharepoint™ Team Services (STS) from Microsoft, the following types of pages do not work without excluding the virtual directory containing the pages from the STS ISAPI filter:
ASP pages
ASP.NET pages
PHP pages
PerlScript pages
Procedures
To enable these types of pages to work on your STS Web site
In the Central Administration Web site for STS, choose to Manage your virtual directory or Web site.
Under Defined Managed Paths, type the path to the virtual directory that contains your excluded pages (such as <code>\MyASPPages</code>) and select Exclude.
The topics in this section introduce ASP, explain the basic concepts of scripting with ASP, and discuss more complex application issues such as how to maintain state.
Important
To help minimize the attack surface of the server, IIS 6.0 is not installed on Windows Server 2003 by default. When you first install IIS 6.0, it is locked down -- which means that only request handling for static Web pages is enabled, and only the World Wide Web Publishing Service (WWW service) is installed. None of the features that sit on top of IIS are turned on, including ASP, ASP.NET, CGI scripting, FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions from Microsoft, and WebDAV publishing. If you do not enable these features, IIS returns a 404 error. You can enable these features through the Web Service Extensions node in IIS Manager. For more information about how to troubleshoot 404 errors and other issues, see Troubleshooting in IIS 6.0.
This section includes the following information:
Checklist: ASP Security: Provides a checklist of issues to monitor when developing ASP applications that include user input or database access.
What's New in ASP: Describes new features added in this release.
Important Changes in ASP: Describes functionality and behavior that has changed for this release.
Related Information
For information about writing server-side scripts with ASP and creating ASP applications, see the Active Server Pages Guide on MSDN Online or in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Software Development Kit (SDK).
Redirect Reference: This section explains how to format a server redirection correctly. For reference topics related to ASP, see the IIS Web Application Technology Reference section of the IIS Software Developer Kit (SDK).