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2 Scripting

What is ASP?

ASP (Active Server Pages) is a server side scripting technology that allows developers to easily connect to databases and generate dynamic web pages.

ASP is primarily used on Microsoft/IIS platform, but ports for U*x are available. If you are intending to use a non-Microsoft platform, you may be better off using PHP.

For assistance in learning ASP, check out »www.w3schools.com and »www.learnasp.com

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by devin5 edited by big greg
last modified: 2005-06-10 07:17:21

What is ASP.NET?

ASP.NET is a subset of the Microsoft .NET platform, primarily intended for developing dynamically generated web pages.

Distinct features of ASP.NET include the use of full featured languages such as VB.NET or C# as a development language, compiled assemblies resulting in large performance gains over traditional scripting technologies (ASP, PHP), and many other enhancements to traditional web application programming.

Currently ASP.NET will run only on Microsoft/IIS 5 platforms, but open-source UNIX variants are in development.

More information can be found on »www.asp.net and »www.w3schools.com/ngws/

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by devin5 edited by big greg
last modified: 2005-06-10 07:26:21

What is Perl?

Perl is a language originally developed for use in Unix systems to manipulate large amounts of text. It has evolved into a very powerful general purpose scripting language that is commonly used to produce programs the run though the CGI (the Common Gateway Interface) on web servers.

Perl is especially good at processing large and arbitrary amounts of text, such as logs or user input. Later versions can access databases, and even be used to produce Windows applications. Perl syntax can be difficult to read, but once mastered, there is little you cannot do with Perl. In fact, BBR itself is written in Perl.

Perl 1.0 was released in 1987. It was created by Larry Wall. Perl runs just about everywhere: Unix (all), Macintosh (OS 8 and X), Windows (all versions), and lots of other platforms. See »www.perl.org/ for lots of information on Perl.

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by Mospaw edited by big greg
last modified: 2004-05-31 07:02:15

What is PHP?

PHP is a "backend" general purpose scripting language designed to interface easily to databases and provide for a means to create dynamic web pages. PHP is typically used on *NIX based systems, but ports have been made to support Windows as well.

PHP code is typically integrated into the the HTML pages themselves, providing an easy way of adding dynamic content to a web page. The latest version of PHP, can be found here, is also designed to directly interface to a variety of databases, such as Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, to allow the creation of large, content-driven sites, for example, forums.

PHP is open-source freeware, and has a good user community. more information is available at www.php.net

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by Mospaw edited by graffixx
last modified: 2005-06-14 10:55:16

What is this static and dynamic stuff?

What is it?
In programming, static and dynamic are terms used to describe content. Static content is content that is preset and doesn't change. Dynamic content is the exact opposite; it changes.

Static Example
Code:

<font face="Georgia, serif">Welcome User</font>

Displays on page:

quote:
Welcome User

Dynamic Example (PHP)
Code:

<?
$user = "Entelligence";
?>
<font face="Georgia, serif">Welcome <? echo $user ?></font>

Displays on page:

quote:
Welcome Entelligence

Just note that it will display welcome and (whatever the value of $user is).

Why would I want to use dynamic content?

There are many reasons that you might want to use dynamic content. One of the biggest ones is for personalizing. It seems a lot nicer when you go to a site and it says "welcome (your name)", rather than just "welcome user". You could also use it to display local weather, news, etc. for users based on their zip code. Dynamic content can also make a site easier to maintain.

How Do I add dynamic content to my site?

A very common web programming language for displaying dynamic content is PHP. This is very simple example of how to do this in PHP (note that PHP must be installed on your web server):
First, lets declare our variable $user in our header.

<html>
<head>
<title>PHP Example</title>
<?
$user = "Your Name Here";
?>
</head>
<body>
<font face="Georgia,serif">Welcome <? echo $user ?></font>
</body>
</html>

That's it. Of course this is a very basic example and probably wouldn't have much use over static code. But if we wanted to; we could make $user = $sqluser and make $sqluser = an sql query to get the username stored in a database.

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by Entelligence edited by big greg
last modified: 2004-06-07 07:53:00

All FAQs » Web Monks FAQ » 2 Scripting

2 Scripting

What is ASP?

What is ASP.NET?

What is Perl?

What is PHP?

What is this static and dynamic stuff?