Summary

In this chapter we have had the opportunity to review a wide variety of techniques and technologies that we can bring to bear when developing Active Server Web sites. ASP is a very powerful tool. Its ability to access data via ADO only scratches the surface of the many features that are made available by this exiting new product. The issues that we have addressed here provide you with a good introduction into the many features and capabilities of ASP and the ADO.

The main points of this chapter are:

• Connecting to a data source: In this section we examined the hows and whys of connecting to a data source, and then went beyond the basics to take a look at the flexibility built into the

  Connection

  object.
  
  
• With an understanding of the

  Connection

  object under our belts, we dug into the workings of ADO, looking at expanding the

  Recordset

  object and accessing binary data.
  
  
• With the fundamentals behind us, we took a look at moving our Access database into the SQL Server environment using the upsizing tools available for Access.
  
  
• With a lot of information behind us, we took a look at a 'real' example of how to make some of this stuff to work for us. The MAP example goes outside ADO, and walks through pulling more then just data from the database.
  
  
• In the end, we had to consider the nature of things on the wild and woolly Internet. A brief introduction to SQL Server security provided some insight as to how we can protect our data.

With this chapter, we've reached the end of Part 1, and the introduction to the basics of Active Server Pages, Active Server Components and, in particular, the ActiveX Data Object. We've come a long way in these five chapters, but by now we have all the information we need to put ASP to work on our Web sites.

ASP isn't, however, just a Web site tool for creating dynamic pages. As you've seen in some of the examples, it allows us to start building real client/server applications in an environment (i.e. HTTP and TCP/IP) which was never really designed with this task in mind. This is the subject for Part 2 of this book.

© 1997 by Wrox Press. All rights reserved.