Active Server Pages (ASP) is a web development environment commonly used in legacy Microsoft ® Windows ® based server environment. While indoglobal.com uses Linux servers exclusively, we also offer Sun ONE Active Server Pages for our customers who need to run their legacy ASP based scripts on our servers.
Note
If you starting a new development and not starting from existing legacy ASP based code, consider using programming language other than ASP. While our servers supports ASP, it is not the native environment for running legacy ASP based scripts, especially when the ASP code in question is developed under Microsoft ® Windows ® environment. Other languages like PHP or Perl are better supported on our servers.
In order to use ASP, as usual you need to name your files with extension .asp. Make sure the extension is in lower case, especially when you are uploading from a Microsoft ® Windows ® environment. Please also note that filenames on our servers are case sensitive. This is different from Microsoft ® Windows ® environment where filenames are case insensitive.
For more information about developing ASP applications using Sun ONE Active Server Pages, please see the official documentation.
Tip
If you find ASP is too limiting for developing your application, you can try converting your ASP scripts to PHP scripts. Please refer to the section called “Converting ASP Scripts to PHP” for more information.
ASP's native environment is Microsoft ® Windows ® and therefore most ASP scripts also developed under Microsoft ® Windows ®. Since indoglobal.com uses Linux based servers exclusively, care must be taken when developing ASP based application. The following listed several differences between original Microsoft ® Windows ® version of ASP and Sun ONE ASP installed on our servers.
Case sensitivity. Filenames are case insensitive in Microsoft ® Windows ® environment, while under Linux they are case sensitive. It is advisable that you use lowercase to name files and also when referencing a filename inside your ASP code.
Database support. Most ASP application developed under Microsoft ® Windows ® system uses Microsoft ® SQL Server™ or Microsoft ® Access ® for its database backend. However, under our servers there are no option to use either product, you will need to use MySQL or PostgreSQL as your application's database backend. If you already have database under Microsoft ® SQL Server™ or Microsoft ® Access ® you will need to migrate your data to one of our supported database products. There are several utilities for converting your data to MySQL at http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Contrib_converters.html. For PostgreSQL, there are also several useful conversion utilites at http://techdocs.postgresql.org/.
Connecting to database. ASP applications developed under Microsoft ® Windows ® typically use ODBC system DSN to make connection to database. However, for security reason we don't use system DSNs. Instead you will need to use DSN-less connection string. For more information about connecting to databases, please refer to the section called “Using MySQL Database in Your Application” or the section called “Using PostgreSQL Database in Your Application”.
Other than the standard ASP components, there are also other popular ASP components:
SMTP sending component. We use the CDONTS.NewMail similar to NewMail component included with Microsoft IIS. However it does not include these properties and methods: AttachURL, ContentBase, ContentLocation, MailFormat, SetLocaleIDs, Version.
POP component. This component is used to retrieve email messages from a POP3 server.
File upload component. This component enables users to save files uploaded by site visitors to the server.
For more information on how to use these components, please refer to ASP Online Help at http://aspdoc.indoglobal.com.