By Kevin Yank
October 11th 2001
Reader Rating: 8.6By Kevin Yank

All things considered, ASP is a fairly easy technology to use. Compared to some of the other products out there that let you develop dynamic Web sites with server-side scripting, there is relatively little to daunt the ASP newbie. It's easy to set up, the commands are simple, and the concepts involved in developing a run-of-the-mill ASP Website are relatively simple to grasp. Nevertheless, it has always been frustratingly difficult for ASP beginners to get the information they need to build a database-driven Website using ASP unless they could afford to buy (and spend a month reading) a great, big book on the subject. With this article, I aim to change all that!

Although not ideal for Websites with more than a little traffic, Microsoft Access is a nice database for learning the basics of database-driven Web development with ASP. In this article, I'll demonstrate how to access, retrieve, and update information stored in an Access database by using ASP to build a simple Web database application. The example we shall study will be a Web-based Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. Through this case study, I'll show not only the immense convenience that comes with using a database to build a Web app like this, but also a few nifty tricks that having a database backend makes possible.

Before we get up to our necks in code, let me tell you what I expect from you. This article will assume that you have an understanding of the basics of both ASP and Microsoft Access. If you're new to ASP, you're in luck; I've already written a great series of articles that will bring you up to speed in no time. Begin with Getting Started with ASP, then read ASP Language Basics, Handling Submitted Data with ASP, and finally ASP Sessions and Applications, then you'll be ready to tackle the material presented here. For those of you who have never worked work MS Access, a couple of good tutorials to get you up and running quickly are First Steps with Access and Relational databases, both by Helen Bradley. With those feathers securely in your cap, we're ready to get started. Let's go!

The FAQ Database

First thing's first. Before we build an ASP-based page to display the contents of a FAQ database, we need to build that database. For this application, we'll only need a simple one-table database. Open MS Access and create a new, blank database called faq.mdb. Create a single table called FAQ, with the columns shown here:

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