The World Wide Web, or Web, is a distributed information retrieval system that employs multiple protocols on the Internet. The Web operates on a client/server model, where the client is a Web browser and the server is a Web server. When a browser requests a resource from a server, it identifies that resource by means of a formalized address known as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The format of a URL is:
protocol://server.network.domain/path/resource
This sample URL uses HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to specify the SDK Start Page of the Microsoft® Developer Network Online within Microsoft's home page on the Web:
http://www.microsoft.com/msdn/sdk/default.htm
A Web server can respond to an HTTP URL with a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) document. The hypertext in this document is interpreted by the browser to generate an interactive display on the user's screen. An HTML document is commonly stored in an .HTML or .HTM file.
A Web server can also respond to an HTTP URL with an Active Server Pages (ASP) document, which contains hypertext and ASP script, and is stored in an .ASP file. The script is processed by Microsoft® Internet Information Server (IIS), which generates normal HTML output and sends it to the browser. IIS version 3.0 or later is required for proper handling of .ASP files.
The CDO Rendering Library exposes a set of objects that can be used by IIS to render CDO objects and properties into HTML output. The CDO Rendering objects are described in the remainder of this section. The following table lists these objects in alphabetic order and gives the purpose of each one.
| Object | Purpose |
|---|---|
| CalendarView | Specify tabular rendering for a calendar object. |
| Column | Specify rendering for one property in a table view. |
| Columns collection | Provide rendering for every renderable property in a table view. |
| ContainerRenderer | Render a container object. |
| Format | Specify rendering for one property. |
| Formats collection | Provide rendering for every renderable property of an object. |
| ObjectRenderer | Render selected properties of a CDO object. |
| Pattern | Specify rendering for certain values of a property. |
| Patterns collection | Provide rendering for all values of a property. |
| RenderingApplication | Create rendering objects. |
| TableView | Specify tabular rendering for a container object. |
| Views collection | Provide a selection of views for rendering a container object. |