NT ACCOUNT DOCS - ASP and COMs


What ASP Components (COMs) do you support by default?
The following is a list of COMs that are auto-installed into the server. You need to contact us to activate the one you want.

JMail, ASPEmail, ASPEncrypt, ASPGrid, ASPUpload, File Upload, SAFileUP, ImageSize, LastMod, GUID, ASPJPeg, ASP Resources

We will consider installing other COMs not on the list after we have reviewed them fully, but we can't promise anything. Server stability is key and most COMs are dangerous to operations.

What are Active Server Pages?
These are components that allow web developers to create server-side scripted templates that generate dynamic, interactive web server applications. By embedding special programatic codes in standard HTML pages, a user can access data in a database, interact with page objects such as Active-X or Java components, or create other types of dynamic output. The HTML output by an Active Server Page is totally browser independent which means that it can be read equally well by Microsoft Explorer, Netscape Navigator, or most other browsers.

ASP make it easy for a developer to create everything from a website that is customized to a viewers tastes, to a complex database application that may access legacy data from a mainframe.

The following is a very simple example of ASP:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Sample Web Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P>
Hello <%= Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_USER") %>
The time here is <%= now %>
Your browser is <% = Request.ServerVariables("http_user_agent") %>
</BODY></HTML>

Are Active Server Pages also CGI?
Yes and no (don't you love our straight answers). Active Server Pages and CGI scripts do similar things - namely create dynamic output on a web page or react to form input. However, Active Server Pages run in the same process as the server, and they are multi-threaded. All this leads to faster speeds that CGI scripts can achieve and the ability to handle large numbers of users.

Do Active Server Pages Use Visual Basic?
This is one of the biggest misunderstandings about ASP. It is not Visual Basic nor is it its own language. A programmer must think of it as a container to use other languages. We support VBScript, Javascript and PerlScript. You can use any of there languages with your ASP pages.

Are Active Server Pages secure?
Yes. They can not cause security breaches with a browser on their own, however, malicious Java or ActiveX apps can be embedded in them just like they can be embeded in ordinary HTML pages. At the server end, individual ASPs can be protected on a per user basis.

What databases can I use with Active Server Pages?
You can use any ODBC-compliant database such as FoxPro, Access, Paradox, etc. We can provide Microsoft SQL Server if requested (additional setup and monthly charges are involved).

Can I Use File DSNs?
Even though Microsoft suggests to use these in much of their literature, we prefer our customers do not use them on our shared servers as we are able to tune system datasources to fit the architecture of our particular servers. In order to "synchronize" your local setup (if you are using Visual Interdev), create a system datasource and name it the same as the datasource on our systems. In order to access your datasource through an ASP page, your connection string should look like:

Session("DataConn_ConnectionString") = "DSN=mydsn;UID=;PWD=" ;

In order to setup your local ODBC datasource (DSN):

1. Contact our support.
2. State the needed driver (example: MS Access) and name the datasource.
4. State the correct database file.
5. Please allow 2-4 biz days for addition.
 

You provide ASP and Cold Fusion. Can I use both? Is one better than the other?
You can use both in your website, although not on the same page.

What are some internet resources on Active Server Pages?