You've just addressed a bunch of things which it would be hard to learn all at once. The central element in what you have described above is asp itself. Here's a rundown of the things you mentioned:
Asp is a server side technology which allows you to embed scripts into pages on a server. Scripts are (usually small) blocks of programming code. Therefore asp is similar in principal to other technologies like PHP, CGI/perl, and cold-fusion. Asp scripts allow you to customize the (HTML) output of the page the script is in. Furthermore, since asp can interact with ADO (a microsoft database interface) as well as with the local file system, you can retrieve content from or write content to databases, files, and so on. You can also interact with any of variety of
components which are basically separate programs residing on the same server as the asp page and which are either available from third party vendors or which you can create yourself. Asp can also interact with programs residing elsewhere through a technology called DCOM.
VBScript is a simple scripting language which is the typical choice for writing the scripts contained in an asp page. (It is probably also the simplest scripting language in existence). The term "scripting language" refers to a usually lightweight programming language which is compiled on the fly at the moment it is needed by a runtime engine rather than being compiled into a more formal executable file (like you would do with C, C++, pascal, fortran, ada, VB, smalltalk, etc.) In an asp page the "script" parts of the page are always enclosed with <% %> tags.
Thus, a very simple asp page would look like:
<html>
<%
for i = 1 to 3
[tab]response.write("hello<br>"
next
%>
</html>
and a user broswing this page would see:
hello
hello
hello
VB (Visual Basic )is a general purpose programming language created by Microsoft. Its principal use in asp is, as crystalized pointed out above, to write components. A component is a precompiled piece of code which can be called by an asp script so that the code does not have to be in the asp script itself. Components in the context of asp are also called COM objects (Component Object Model) and can be written in VB, C++, java, or whatever. (I haven't tackled C++ myself but I have worked with COM in VB and java.) You don't need to worry about COM if you are just starting.
Visual Interdev is just an editing program and is not specifically necessary since you could write asp pages in notepad or any other text editor you want. I have Interdev/VisualStudio but I usually use Cold-Fusion studio instead because it doesn't require front-page for ftp access and I find it less interfering with my coding.
XML is structured form of data handling and storage which is often compared to HTML (although I think it has very little to do with HTML and much more to do with traditional markup languages which define data types and relationships). I've been finding lately that XML is rather handy in asp. However, though it is a useful tool, it is not necessary and might be more confusing if you are just getting started. I would wait until you get the basics of asp down at which time it will become clear where XML fits in.
IIS is a type of server software. Strictly speaking, a
server is just a program which is able to respond to requests of a certain type. When referring to the internet, however, the term
server loosely means: a computer which has a particular server software running on it. IIS (Internet Information Server) is a typical choice to install on a computer running the Microsoft NT operating system. Different platforms have different softwares available (for example on a Unix platform you typically run Apache).
To run asp you have to be on an IIS server or at least on a microsoft platform with a server. If you have any windows machine with personal web server you can run it on there provided that asp was installed when the server was. (you can run asp on Unix but you need some auxiliary software called Chilisoft and I don't see why anyone would bother with that since asp is so proprietary).
So to get started you have to find a machine with a server installed on it which runs asp. Then you should probably go to some sites that have examples for beginners and just try to write tiny little scripts, put them on your server, and see if they work. Gradually (or maybe really quickly) you'll get the idea. Asp, I think is probably the easiest server technology to learn and I like its simplicity.
There's tons of sites which have very simple examples and tutorials on asp. Try doing a search on "asp tutorial" and you'll probably find stuff.
My personal favorite for asp is:
For VBScript reference try:
Good Luck!
[sig]<p>--Will Duty<br><a href=mailto:wduty@radicalfringe.com>wduty@radicalfringe.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br> [/sig]
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