A Web server technology from Microsoft that allows for the creation of dynamic, interactive sessions with the user.

In plain English that means that Active Server Pages (ASP) refers to a web programming language that allows a web page to insert and extract information from a database.

In short, when a browser reqests an Active Server Page from a website, the instructions on that page are not downloaded to the browser the instructions on that page are followed by the server (the computer on which the website is located). These instructions may be anything from recording the date and time that the page was requested in a database through to asking the visitor to fill in a form and save the results into a databse and send an e-mail to the site administrator and to the visitor with the contents of that form.

Very powerful and versatile and the base for all of our dynamic websites. You are presently viewing an article generated by an Active Server Pages application.