For those not familiar with Active Server Pages (ASP), they are Microsoft's version of active web content. These enable pages to be customised to the viewer, as well as automatically being generated, not a trivial issue. ASP (the book) aims to try to help you understand how you can go about creating your own ASP pages. To do so it covers the ASP architecture and the registry, along with the way the two interact. It then goes straight into how to build your own pages using ASP along with VBScript.

Armed with the basics, the authors lead you onto the key objects within ASP, such as the request and server objects. These are given with clear explanations of each, along with sample code (more of which is found on the included CD) to use.

One of the main points with ASP is its ability to interact with the user in collecting data and then processing an appropriate reply. Appropriately, once the groundwork has been established, it is dealt with around half way through the book. This normally involves reading or writing to a database, with the result being generated and then displayed back to the user. Examples of how this can be done in various languages, including Visual C++ and VisualBasic are provided.

ASP (the book) is a good foundation for grasping the basics, but you are likely to need additional references as your knowledge develops. The price particularly has a bearing on purchasing this book, with the US price being reasonable, but about the same as the UK one. Alas this does rather detract from its overall value.