FAQs

• How well does the ASPState perform when stored in SQL Server?

  The target performance for the full release of ASP.Net will be 75-80% of the performance seen by using in-process state management.

• Is there a way to directly query session data if a SQL Server StateStore is being used?

  The session data is encrypted but the creation date, expiration date, session id, and timeout are all directly available.

• Is it possible to share a cache object across servers in a cluster?

  The Cache object is restricted to being used only within an application running on a single machine. Microsoft concluded that the performance hit to share the objects cross-process would be too great to share it across multiple machines in...

• Is it ok to save a dataset in Page ViewState?

  Scott Guthrie from Microsoft recommends that you avoid putting a DataSet into Page ViewState. The downside with this is that doing so can drastically increase the size of ViewState that is posted back and forth between round-trips.

• Can session variables be accessed from code-behind?

  Yes. You can access the "Session" dictionary within a code-behind file just like you would if you were accessing it from within an line .aspx file. For example: Session("Name") = "Scott"

• What is being passed back and forth in the _ViewState form control?

  The __VIEWSTATE hidden field is used to transfer the differences in controls from what is declared in the page -- and the values they contain at the end of a request immediately prior to rendering. We can then use this information to re-con...

• How do I determine ADO's capabilities?

  ADO is dependent upon the data provider it uses. The easiest/quickest way is to check the Supports property to confirm that the connection or recordset you opened supports the functionality you actually need. You should also confirm that th...

• How do I find Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles for ADO?

  Connect to the Microsoft Knowledge Base on the World Wide Web. To access the Microsoft Knowledge Base on the World Wide Web, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://support.microsoft.com/search

• How do I get started using ADO with C++?

  The best solution is to use #import, which generates very thin classes around the ADO typelib and lets you manipulate them in a syntax very close to the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) syntax. Most ADO samples are written using VBA, and...

• What is the difference between the ADODB and ADOR objects?

  The ADODB Library contains additional server side objects (Connection, Command, Error, Parameters, and so forth). These are best used within server side components to communicate with the database. The ADOR Library is a lighter weight cl...

• What is Remote Data Service (RDS) for ActiveX Data Objects (ADO)?

  Remote Data Service (RDS) is used to transport Active Data Object Recordsets from a server to a client computer. The resulting recordset is cached on the client computer and disconnected from the server. RDS uses a subset of the ADO Object...

• Where is the documentation that comes with ADO?

  The documentation that comes with ADO is in html format and can be found by downloading the MDAC Software Development Kit (SDK) from the preceding Web site. Make sure to choose the Microsoft Data Access Components SDK Stand Alone Setup opti...

• Where can I get ActiveX Data Objects?

  ADO is part of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC). ADO can be obtained from the Free Downloads page on this Web site: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/data/aa937695.aspx

• What are the ActiveX Data Objects (ADO)?

  ActiveX Data Objects are a language-neutral object model that expose data raised by an underlying OLE DB Provider. The most commonly used OLE DB Provider is the OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers, which exposes ODBC Data sources to ADO.

• When shouldn't I program in Perl?

  When your manager forbids it--but do consider replacing them :-). Actually, one good reason is when you already have an existing application written in another language that's all done (and done well), or you have an application language...

• Can I do [task] in Perl?

  Perl is flexible and extensible enough for you to use on virtually any task, from one-line file-processing tasks to large, elaborate systems. For many people, Perl serves as a great replacement for shell scripting. For others, it serves as...

• How does Perl compare with other languages like Java, Python, REXX, Scheme, or Tcl?

  Favorably in some areas, unfavorably in others. Precisely which areas are good and bad is often a personal choice, so asking this question on Usenet runs a strong risk of starting an unproductive Holy War. Probably the best thing to do i...

• Is Perl difficult to learn?

  No, Perl is easy to start learning--and easy to keep learning. It looks like most programming languages you're likely to have experience with, so if you've ever written a C program, an awk script, a shell script, or even a BASIC program, yo...

• How stable is Perl?

  Production releases, which incorporate bug fixes and new functionality, are widely tested before release. Since the 5.000 release, we have averaged only about one production release per year.

• What is Perl 6?

  At The Second O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention, Larry Wall announced Perl 6 development would begin in earnest. Perl 6 was an oft used term for Chip Salzenberg's project to rewrite Perl in C++ named Topaz. However, Topaz provided va...

• What was Ponie?

  Ponie stands for "Perl On the New Internal Engine", started by Arthur Bergman from Fotango in 2003, and subsequently run as a project of The Perl Foundation. It was abandoned in 2006 ( http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.ponie.dev/487 ).

• What are Perl 4, Perl 5, or Perl 6?

  In short, Perl 4 is the past, Perl 5 is the present, and Perl 6 is the future. The number after perl (i.e. the 5 after Perl 5) is the major release of the perl interpreter as well as the version of the language. Each major version has si...

• Which version of Perl should I use?

  There is often a matter of opinion and taste, and there isn't any one answer that fits anyone. In general, you want to use either the current stable release, or the stable release immediately prior to that one. Currently, those are perl5.10...

• Who supports Perl? Who develops it? Why is it free?

  The original culture of the pre-populist Internet and the deeply-held beliefs of Perl's author, Larry Wall, gave rise to the free and open distribution policy of perl. Perl is supported by its users. The core, the standard Perl library, the...

• What is Perl?

  Perl is a high-level programming language with an eclectic heritage written by Larry Wall and a cast of thousands. It derives from the ubiquitous C programming language and to a lesser extent from sed, awk, the Unix shell, and at least a do...

• How can I make a page expire after a certain time period?

  The Expires property of the Response object will tell the browser to keep the page in cache for n minutes:Response.Expires = 10

• How do I set a cookie?

  ASP can set cookies quite easily. They are implemented as a collection in the ASP Response object, so you merely specify the name of the item in that collection and set it's value.

• How do I connect to and display records from a database?

  The most common way to connect to a database is to use ActiveX Data Objects, which comes as part of the Windows MDAC or Microsoft Data Access Components install (see How do I install ASP on my Win 95/98 machine? for details).

• What's ADO and what is it used for?

  ADO stands for ActiveX Data Objects. ADO is an application programming interface (API) and part of Microsoft's Data Access Components. It provides a number of objects that are used in the query and manipulation of databases through ASP.

• What servers support ASP?

  Natively, Microsoft's Internet Information Server and the latest Peer Web Server support ASP (which is free with the NT option pack - you can d/l and install a version for Win 95/98 as well). However a company called chilisoft (www.chili...

• Is ASP a language?

  ASP is not a language like VBScript or JavaScript - it is a hosting environment that extends the normal capabilities of a web server and exposes objects for use in web programming. It is accessed by either VBScript (it's default) or JavaScr...

• What is ASP?

  ASP or Active(X) Server Pages is a Microsoft CGI-like technology that allows you to create dynamically generated web pages from the server side using a scripting language such as VBScript or JavaScript.

• How can I Enhance IIS?

  As an IIS administrator it sometimes gets downright annoying having to fend off all the insults from Apache admins I meet claiming innate server superiority. Generally the discussion about Web administration starts first with all the variou...

• How do I send email from my ASP page?

  Enter your email address, click submit and this ASP code searches through an online access database for the email address entered by the user and then emails a Userid and Password to the email address in the database. This is done with the...

• How could I run an executable through a Web Browser with a simple click and execute interface?

  If your users are using Internet Explorer 5, you might want to take a look at something new and fancy called hypertext applications http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/essentials/versions/Ie5hta.asp.

• How do you access the images in a layer in Netscape?

  You need to access the layers document, i.e. document.layer['layername'].document.images['imagename'] The following illustrates two images, one normal image, and another in a layer:

• How can I move a layer using an onMouseOver event handler?

• How do I change text within table cells?

  This is the text in ONE This is the text in TWO

• How do I change selected parts of the HTML on the page?

  The following will also work in Internet Explorer 4 and 5, and also in Netscape Navigator 6

• How do I change selected parts of the text on the page?

  In Internet Explorer 4, the Dynamic Object Model allows you greater control over objects on the page. By identifying portions of the text using the ID attribute in a HTML tag you can directly access that portion of the text using in the inn...

• How do I alter the HTML source of a layer in Internet Explorer?

  As you are probably aware, Explorer does not support "layers" as such, however text or HTML grouped together using DIV, SPAN and ID can be changed. The innerHTML property allows you to change the HTML source:

• What is span?

  Its a new HTML tag supported by both Netscape Navigator 4 and Internet Explorer 4. It assists cascading style sheets, in that along with it allows you to specify a portion of the output that can be referenced either by style sheets or the...

• What Is The Difference Between the Dim, Public, and Private Statements?

  Private statement variables are available only to the script in which they are declared. Public statement variables are available to all procedures in all scripts. Variables declared with Dim at the script level are available to all proce...

• How Do I Declare Variables?

  You may declare variables implicitly, meaning that you don't need to declare variables prior to their use and can just type something like: myVar = 9. However, this is very bad practice that can result in a number of inexplicable errors. To...

• How Do I Make Remarks In My Code?

  Use the Rem keyword or a single apostrophe ( ' ). If the Rem keyword follows code on a line, it must be separated from the code by a colon. However, when you use an apostrophe, the colon is not required.

• Where should my script be within the document?

  Put the script at the beginning of the of the document, not at the end.

• How Do I Implement VBScript?

  You use VB Script in exactly the same manner as you would JavaScript. Simply place all code between these tags like so:

• Is VBScript Better Than JavaScript?

  It depends what you would call better =). The only con is that you must be using Explorer to see the code execute, which may be annoying for Netscape users that rely on JavaScript. On the other hand, VBScript operates in much the same way a...

• Where Can I Find VBScript Documentation?

  Microsoft gives you almost everything you need in the way of specifications at their Scripting Technologies web site.

• Where Can I Get VBScript

  f your VBScript-capable browser does not have VBScript or you would like the latest version of VBScript then download it at Microsoft's Scripting Engines download site.