Dr. Drew Hwang, CIS, Cal Poly Pomona
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101
WDD
ECOMM
SWA
SP
Web Design and Development
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Introduction
Structure
Design
Presentation
Client-side Behavior
Server-side Behavior
Server-Side Scripting
Introduction
State Management
ASP.NET
Introduction
Development Approaches
Website Configuration
Server Controls
Data Access
Database Applications
Server-side Design
Print
Server-side scripting
Server-side scripting is a
server technology
for creating the behavior of a Web application on the server-side.
Unlike client-side scripting where scripts are run by the browser, server-side scripts are executed solely on the server through a
server-side scripting enviornment
(Web application server or Web server extension) and the output is returned to the browser as plain HTML.
A
web
application server
is a software framework dedicated to the efficient execution of procedures (programs, routines, scripts) for supporting the construction of Web applications. The server acts as a set of components accessible to the web developer through an
API
defined by the framework itself.
The Web application server integrates with a
Web server
which send the generated HTML to the browser. Sometimes the application server and web server are integrated within a single piece of software.
Functions of Server-side Scripts
Configure Web application enviornment
Manage site design
Generate dynamic web pages
Process business logics
Connect to databases
Control user interactions
Provide Web application security
Web server
A Web server handles the HTTP requests and responses.
When the Web server receives an HTTP request for an HTML page, it responds with an HTTP response with the HTML page.
When the Web server receives an HTTP request for an scripting page, it will delegate the processing to a corresponding Web application server.
The Web server doesn't provide such functionalities as transaction processing, database connectivity, and messaging.
Server-side Scripting Enviornment
Server-side scripts used to be done through CGI (Common Gateway Interface). Today there are many scripting enviornments available for faster and more robust server-side scripting.
There has been a widespread debate among Web developers as to which scripting enviornment is better.
The server-side scripting enviornments can be compared by
development features
. However, these features and benchmarks can change, as these scripting enviornments evolve and improve over time.
The following is a list of common factors to be used in comparison:
Platform
single or cross platforms
performance issues
security issues
Database connectivity
database connectivity
database interoperabillity
Scripting language
general vs. special purpose
simplicity vs. flexibility
open source vs. closed source
Development tool
s
Asp.net has strong IDE visual studio with lot of controls which gives privilege to programmers to work with ease and faster as compared to other programming languages. (See
Microsoft Web Platform
)
There are number of different IDE availables for PHP, developers have to look for the best one.
Separation
behavior (business logic and scripting language), structure (HTML), and presentation (CSS)
Security
built-in security
known security issues