I would like to hear if there is a small classic ASP server, similar to the ASP.NET Development server that comes with Visual Studio?
We are a small group that supports a legacy (classic) ASP site, and would therefore like to have a small server that easily can be executed on a Windows XP machine. Currently we're stuck with IIS 5.1 on our development machines (and because we're running XP Pro, we cannot update to IIS 6 or 7).
I've tried installing the Cassini web server, but that doesn't seem to work with classic ASP either.
You're not going to get anything extra from ASP by running on IIS 6 or 7. Are you having any specific issues with being stuck on IIS 5.1?
Have you tried Baby Web Server? - http://www.pablosoftwaresolutions.com/html/baby_web_server.html
The short answer is No, there is no small web server that runs classic ASP. There are many alternatives, as mentioned here, such as IIS or Apache plug-ins, but none that has a similar small footprint like the ASP.NET Development Server that comes with Visual Studio and that supports debugging.
There is a small footprint web server that runs Classic ASP.
Its called Abyss Web server. Abyss Web server is produced by Aprelium software and can be downloaded free of charge. Abyss Web server can be configured to run with ASP.net OR Classic ASP.
The Server can be configured to run ASP.net without any addition downloads.
To run Classic ASP on the server a program called ActiveHTML written by Selisoft must be downloaded and configured to allow Classic ASP to run on the Abyss web server. Active HTML is on a 45 day free trial and if you like it the purchase price is currently around 30 to 40 euros depending on whether you need a client or server version.
Hope this helps.
Anthony
Abyss web server http://www.aprelium.com/ supports classic ASP (also ASP.Net, Ruby, and PHP) with a 3rd party extension that cost $$$. But at one point there was a free version of the third party component, you MIGHT be able to find a copy of that still floating around. Not sure about debugging.
Baby ASP Web Server can take care of things for you, PLUS you don't have to install it, so it doesn't plop all sorts of crazy settings into your registry.
Get it here
Your only real choice is to either run Windows server or Vista in order to get the latest version of IIS.
Cassini doesn't support classic asp.
According to this post it is not possible to run ASP on Cassini. A couple of google searches later I have still not been able to find any other alternatives either.
What functionality is it that you're after? If it is the quick-and-easy running features of VS, you can quite easily make the IDE debug on IIS (although ASP cannot technically be "debugged" - what you really do is just run it with the Ctrl+F5 command).
Here is a web site that allows you to run classic ASP pages from any web server (including IIS and Apache), but it costs money:
http://www.selisoft.com/en/ahtml/index.phtml
Related
We are moving our web site from a Windows 2003 server running IIS 6 to a Windows 2008 R2 server running IIS 7.5. The web site is mostly written in classic ASP but there are a handful of Dot Net apps as part of the web site as well.
Right now I am just trying to get the basic foundational code to work and that is all Classic ASP. There are a couple of ASP files that are just VBScript pages with a series of functions in the file. In the main pages there is a statement embedded near the top of the file.
Later in the ASP page it calls one of the functions from the MyFunctions.asp file. This works great on the old server but on the new server it acts like it never heard of this function and it gives me an error. It is a non descriptive 505 error so I don't know what the browser is actually complaining about.
I tried comparing the IIS 7 Web Site setup with another 2008 R2 & IIS 7.5 web server that is working (although it is running a straight dot net web site so that could be the main difference) to see if I could see if anything was different and they were mostly the same.
I read about creating a Classic ASP App Pool that does not use managed code and the pipeline is classic and I set the web site to use that App Pool but that didn't help anything.
I am at a loss and I don't want to nor do I have the time to rewrite the web site in dot net.
I had a similar thing recently. Turned out that the classic ASP code was using server-side includes and these had been disabled in IIS on the the new server. Worth a check.
The solution was much simpler than I thought. Most of the classic ASP code is written so that the VBScript is wrapped with "<%" and "%>". There may be a setting in IIS 7.5 to allow for this but if I get more specific and wrap my VBScript with "" and "" then everything works fine.
If there is a setting in IIS to not be so strict I don't know where it is. But it is not a problem with me to go through the code and do a simple search and replace.
I've got the undoubted joy of having to put a very simple 'classic ASP' internal website on to a Windows 2000 server (which I believe will be running IIS 5).
I won't have access to this server until the weekend, and all of the original development & testing of this website was all done on IIS 6/Windows 2003.
The website is incredibly simple (some ADO database access to SQL Server, basic vbscript and bits of javascript, HTML forms, simple CSS). It's only going to have a shelf-life of a few months (I know we've all heard that one before!) and then both server and software will be upgraded (replaced, in actual fact). It's completely internal to a small local network, there are no external connections to the network, no session or state information being held, no specific user (or SQL Server) accounts etc. In complexity it's barely a 'homework assignment' type website, really.
The server isn't currently doing anything with IIS right now (there's even a fair chance that IIS hasn't actually been installed on it yet), so upgrading or altering IIS on the server would be an option, if it's possible. We could also make minor changes to the ASP code if necessary.
Is there anything I should watch out for? IIS and ASP are not my usual battlegrounds, and unfortunately we don't have the time or budget to bring in a specialist 'just' for this particular job.
I don't think you have anything to worry about. A lot of ASP classic applications has been deployed to IIS 5 without a hitch (In fact, I think IIS5 was the de-facto webserver from Microsoft when ASP Classic had the highest adoption).
The only thing I can think of to watch out for, is if the application uses any non-standard or new COM objects, that is not present on the Windows Server 2000 box.
I've developed a very simple ASP.NET (jQuery) application.
The RDBMS is MS Sql Server but I could easily convert it in MS Access.
My client would like to have it available on a CD, ready to run.
I was thinking to convert it in a WinForm app but, still, I have to install the framework on the client.
Is there any other "possible" solution?
You're going to have more trouble trying to run a web app on a client machine than you will a desktop application.
A web app requires some sort of web server running, but a desktop app just needs the framework.
You're going to be better off converting it to a desktop app.
If your users are running versions of XP, Vista, or Windows 7 that include IIS, you could conceivably install the application into a virtual directory. That's a lot to ask from end-users, though. Most users won't have IIS installed even if they are running a version of Windows that offers it.
I haven't tried this, but I just found it by searching for "portable asp.net web server"
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/TinyWebServer.aspx
Introduction
Have you ever wanted to show up an
ASP.NET project where IIS was not
accessible? Have you ever thought of
if there can be a way to carry your
web server wherever you go, i.e., on a
USB flash stick or even a CD?
If so, then this cool TinyWebServer is
for you! This tiny portable web server
can be used for testing and developing
ASP.NET projects, wherever IIS is not
available.
Should be simple if you convert it to HTML & jquery script. As HTML doesn't require any seperate runtime & also worth considering asp.net runtime also does the same thing when the response is sent to the client.
You maybe able to do this by using something like cassini http://www.asp.net/downloads/archived/cassini/. This is a simplified version of the visual studio web server that you see when you run from visual studio.
In my team we have used this and wrapped it in a exe that allows us to start the cassini server and start a browser to the cassini server address.
This still relies on the right version of .NET Framework being installed.
EDIT: Some more recent links http://ultidev.com/Products/Cassini/ and
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmitryr/archive/2008/10/03/cassini-for-framework-3-5.aspx
I am building an ASP .NET 2.0 web app for an intranet environment. The site may have to be hosted on an XP machine in the LAN. IIS would restrict the number of connections to 40.
My requirements are different - the number of clients in the LAN could be much higher - say upto 1000 or maybe even more.
The site is built using ASP .NET 2.0 and extensively uses ASP .NET Ajax 1.0.
What options do I have? Is hosting it on an Apache server possible? (with ASP .NET Ajax)
If not, any alternatives?
Thanks.
EDIT: I've heard about ultidev cassini. Is that a good option (ASP .NET 2.0+ ASP .NET AJAX 1.0)?
I wouldn't consider cassini, in my experience it's too slow for production. Other alternatives:
Apache + mod_mono (but your app would be running under Mono instead of "standard" .net, which may or may not bring its own problems)
Apache + mod_aspdotnet (but this mod seems rather old and unmaintained)
Buy a Windows Web Server license (2003 or 2008), but I guess that's not an option is it? :-)
With those sorts of numbers, you should be able to justify a license really - will they all be accessing the server concurrently - if not you might be able to get away with the XP hosting.
How are you managing 1000 users without a single server instance in there - surely one of them has a bit of capacity to run IIS?
You can get a Windows Web Server 2008 License from around $469
This doesn't require CALs for access, but (IANAL) you might not be able use Windows Auth with that and it should be a public facing website...
I'd like to run some small private/home applications on a local machine, but I dislike the idea to set up a full Win2003 Server with IIS for this.
Is there a easy and cheap way to get an ASP.Net application running at home?
Windows 2000 has ASP, Windows XP Professional also can run it. Look up how to turn on IIS, the built in webserver. Sure Win2k3 Server would be a nicer implementation, but for personal stuff, any of them work.
The easiest way, assuming your desktop has an OS that supports it, is the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. Requires XP or higher, but doesn't work on Home editions of XP or Vista. It'll install IIS (which version depends on your OS), SQL Server 2008 Express, the .Net Framework, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, and more. There's even a video on the linked page that'll show you how to set it all up.
Try VIsual Studio 2008 Express Web Developer. It's free, and better than many that are not. It comes with a built-in web server so you can compile,deploy and test immediately. No need for IIS.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/
Depending on what kind of app and what version of .Net you could run Cassini. It's the free, open source web server that supports .Net. I'm not sure if it's been updated to handle 3.5, but I used to use at home to run some pretty serioud 2.0 apps that I had written.
Here's the Ultidev version which has been updated: http://www.ultidev.com/products/Cassini/ Looks like it'll handle 3.5, so pretty much anything you have.
I have been running .NET apps on my home machine (XP) for years, and ASP apps for years before that. Just install IIS and then the .NET frameworks (and whatever else you need, e.g., MVC) and you are good to go. If your machine is behind a router you will need to port-forward port 80 to your desktop. If you do not have static IP, you can use a free service like DynDNS.org to give you a hostname, and you run a small client to keep the DNS for that hostname pointed to your router's IP. If you want to use your own hostname, register one with someone like GoDaddy.com, and then use a free service like ZoneEdit.com to keep the DNS updated with the correct IP.