VBScript (ASP) demo
The native mode for Microsoft Active Server Pages. Can offer significant performance advantages when deployed on Windows-based platforms.
VBScript is what people usually mean when they refer (inaccurately) to ASPs - Microsoft's Active Server Pages. In fact, ASPs do not refer to a single scripting/programming method - ASP technology constitutes a scripting environment that supports not merely VBScript, but can support PerlScript and server-side JavaScript and is extensible to other scripting methods.However, VBScript is the 'native mode' for ASPs and shares many common methods with Visual Basic. It is no longer Windows-specific, and does not require Microsoft server technology - we have developed ASPs on Windows boxes and transferred these to Linux platforms with the minimum of modification.
There are good reasons to suggest the use of ASPs in general, and specifically VBScript, in many situations (particularly when an NT server is involved). Firstly, like Visual Basic, ASP scripting makes considerable use of inbuilt operating system modules. This can offer a considerable performance advantage over some other methods.
Secondly (and it has to be admitted that this is a typical Microsoft ploy), if the server software used is IIS, ASPs come with the territory. This means that they are automatically available, with a minimum of configuration - plus with the advent of Windows 2000/XP, they are readily available on a desktop server to developers. This has not only rendered ASP hosting inexpensive from the start, but the 'learning base' of ASP-savvy developers is large and growing.
In our opinion, VBScript/ASP is not without its flaws. The most obvious used to be its lack of cross-platform availability, though versions are now available for other operating systems (but many Linux developers will probably still not go near it, simply out of deeply-felt convictions).
The worst issue is its relative unreadability - while it is not anywhere near as bad as Perl or C/C++ in this respect (both have been described as 'write-only' languages), the use of calls to operating system modules, which have their own quirks and special parameters, requires that a user manual be kept close at hand at all times. For this reason, we have generally developed small to medium systems at Albedo using Cold Fusion or PHP. We have frequently used VBScript as an added element of a hybrid system that is primarily written in an other language, however.
To see VBScript in action with a simple database example, use the Demo form below.
Example sites (Albedo):
Internurse (here VBScript is used, almost invisibly, in support of the site search application, DTSearch).
VBScript links:
Microsoft
