For NT and Win95/98 machines, ASP is another option. It's included with
NT, FrontPage and other products as well. It works with JET (the
Access database), though it goes through ODBC, so can work with other
packages.
The combination helps with the logistics of development in an educational
environment. For example, a student or staff member could run Personal Web
Server with ASP and JET on a Win95 machine w/o any connections to a
server. They could do their development with whatever tools they have -
Notepad for some, FP for others. When they're done, the can upload their
code to an IIS machine. All the licenses are cheap - in fact, many schools
probably already have the stuff they need. That's the reason I use it at
my university, in fact - it was lying around. We already had the
licenses required, since all the components were included with things we
already used.
One disadvantage of ASP is that it's relatively time intensive to use. You
have to be able to program reasonably well to use it at all. CF is easier
for doing simple stuff. A companion technology to ASP is IDC - similar in
approach to simple CF scripts, and seems quite easy to use (I haven't used
it much myself). IDC works in the same environments as ASP.
Not sure whether there are ASP interpreters for Mac and Unix servers, like
Apache - I suspect there are. You can check on Microsoft's site.
If you want to see a simple site that uses ASP, try:
http://w3.sba.oakland.edu/dis/
It's a site for a university department. Go to People or Course Webs. Add
yourself to the People list as a friend, if you like. Everything works
with ASP and JET, was initially developed at my house using PWS and FP,
and then uploaded to an IIS machine.
BTW, I grew up in Brisbane, went to NBCAE and UQ, and worked at UQ as a
systems programmer in the early '80s before coming to the US for my Ph.D.
Discouraging to see that the top-of-the-line machines I used back then are
in the university's computer museum now. Sigh. I have 4 sisters in
Brisbane, one teaching at a TAFE, and another working as a journalist at
UQ.
Kieran
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