ASP or Active Server Pages is a server side programming language and part of Microsoft’s (IIS) Internet Information Server. ASP can help deliver dynamic content to the client from databases and can dynamically generate interactive pages. An asp page normally consists of HTML and scripting code. In asp, the browser calls .asp file instead of .html and the server processes the script and returns a html page to the browser.

The following article will explain the advantages and disadvantages of ASP for people interested in the field of web development such as programmers, web developers and others.

Advantages of ASP

Performance: ASP.NET improves performance by utilizing the strengths of JIT compilation, automatic resource optimization, runtime profiling, automatic memory management, early binding, better caching and exception handling.

Inbuilt data caching module: ASP.NET has a data caching module to decide on which data on the ASP page should be cached and when to empty this cache and when to re-query.

Support for Tools: With ASP you can drag and drop your web controls just like how it is done in Visual Basic controls. All you have to do is just double click to write a server program for the control.

Ease of Use: ASP pages are just HTML pages with ASP programs encapsulated between <% and %> tags. To run an asp file you just have to place it into a directory in your server and run it provide you have proper authorization. All you have to do to make some changes is just edit your asp file and the modification will be executed.

Flexibility: With ASP you can code your scripts in both VBScript and Microsoft Jscript. There are also existing modules to support languages like Python, perl along with solutions to incorporate other languages. So even if you are new to ASP you can use your previous knowledge in other programming languages like VB and JavaScript while migrating to ASP. This makes it easier to learn ASP even with just html knowledge.

Disadvantages of ASP

Higher costs: To process asp pages you need to install IIS on a Windows platform server. You have to buy MS-SQL to connect to your database in ASP. And you need to add some components as there are no inbuilt features like in PHP. All these activities will cost you money.

Lower Speed: ASP is slower than PHP, as it is based on COM architecture that is actually an overhead to the server.

Not Platform Compatible: ASP does not have platform compatibility like PHP. This is because it is mostly dependent on Microsoft products and needs a Windows platform along with an ASP-Apache installation at the server side.

Needs VB knowledge: The syntax of ASP has a lot of similarity with that of Visual Basic. Hence some VB knowledge is needed to program is ASP.

ASP is one of the best options for e-business software development. At the same time we cannot rule out the other languages completely as they have their own advantages.