Summary

The world of web-based applications is made possible by Active Server Pages and the Application and Session objects. These powerful objects allow you transform a web site from a series of linked pages to an actual application by creating a means to hold user information from page to page. In this chapter, we have looked at:

• How cookies can help us store information over a long period of time, and even after the user has left our site
• When and how to use cookies to store information at the client's computer
• How the Application object can be used to store information that can be accessed by all users accessing a web site
• What the global.asa file is used for, and how it helps us interact with the beginning and the end of sessions and applications
• The powerful Session object, which allows us to treat a user's interaction with the web site as a continuous action, rather than just a disconnected series of page requests

Now that we are on our way towards building web-based applications, we will need to look at some good coding techniques and how we can go about debugging our code. That's the subject of our next chapter.