Designing Active Server Pages: Scott Mitchell's Guide to Writing Reusable Code

Developers of Active Server Pages often reinvent the wheel. Their background in web design, with its separate HTML page for each viewable web page on a site, leads many ASP developers to create a distinct ASP page each time they think they need one. Often times, these pages are functionally similar. With intelligent planning, an ASP developer stands to save a great deal of time by creating reusable ASP pages. Designing Active Server Pages is tailor-made for these developers. There is currently a plethora of Active Server Pages books. However, the vast majority of these books are either technical references or how-to books for beginners. Designing Active Server Pages is written for the intermediate to advanced user. Furthermore, nearly every other book on ASP focuses on using VBScript, even though ASP supports an array of scripting languages, including JScript and PerlScript. Designing Active Server Pages shows how to start using these other languages. The latest version of the scripting engines (Version 5.1 for VBScript) adds new features not available before the 5.0 release. These features include class support for VBScript, and Regular Expression searching through the use of a COM object. Designing Active Server Pages explains why using classes in VBScript is beneficial, and demonstrates the power of regular expression searching. This book shows how to simplify the process by only requiring one ASP page to handle ALL of the Forms throughout a web site, thus reducing the amount of code one has to write. Topics include:

• Using various Microsoft and third-party components to enhance ASP pages
• Creating components using VB and/or VC++
• Sample code for performing routine ASP tasks
• Techniques to allow for reusable database scripts on the database system and on ASP pages
• How to obtain and register third-party components, thus saving massive amounts of time by reusing someone else's code

Designing Active Server Pages is for developers who have already mastered the basics of ASP application development and are ready to take the next logical step. It is sure to become an indispensable part of every web developer's library.

Scott Mitchell is the co-founder of one of the most popular ASP resource destinations on the Internet, http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/. Originally started as a college project, 4Guys quickly blossomed into a community of serious web developers. The site attracts tens of thousands of experienced ASP developers every day, and unlike other communities, it also offers a warm welcome and advice for those new to Active Server Pages. In addition to 4guysfromrolla.com, Scott has extensive experience building real-world web sites using Active Server Pages, including building an intranet tool for Microsoft's Office Group.