[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change]

# Getting Started with ASP

Microsoft® Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side scripting environment that you can use to create dynamic and interactive Web pages, and build powerful Web applications. When the server receives a request for an ASP file, it processes server-side script code contained in the file to build the HTML Web page that is sent to the browser. In addition to server-side script code, ASP files can contain HTML (including related client-side scripts) as well as calls to COM components that perform a variety of tasks, such as connecting to a database or processing business logic.

The topics in this section introduce Active Server Pages, explain the basic concepts of scripting with Active Server Pages, and discuss more complex application issues such as how to maintain state.

This section contains:

- Overview of HTML: Provides an introduction for beginner HTML writers. If you are familiar with HTML, you do not need to read this page.
- Introduction to Active Server Pages: Provides an overview of Active Server Pages.
- What's New in ASP: Describes new features added in this release.
- Important Changes in ASP: Describes functionality and behavior that has changed for this release.
- ASP Tutorial: Provides lessons and code samples for the beginner who wants to understand how ASP works, and how to use scripting languages like VBScript and JScript to implement Web pages. Code samples are provided for learning how to collect form data, access databases, create simple COM components, and manage sessions.

This section does not contain information on:

- Fundamental concepts of writing server-side scripts with ASP; see Building ASP Pages.
- Information on writing more advanced scripts; see Web Applications: An Overview.

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