COM+ Unleashed

Internet Spoken Here: HTML and XML

Plain vanilla HTML (the language of the Internet) does not provide control-flow mechanisms or variables. After an HTML page is created, it's static in time and cannot change its outcome based on user input. Fortunately, with the help of Dynamic HTML, XML, and Active Server Pages, you can augment HTML and create an illusion of a rich and stateful Web environment. Depending on the application, state (the capability to persist a program's variables) might not be necessary.

A Stateless Environment

Browsers, with all their cosmetic multimedia glory, are for all practical purposes dumb read-only viewers. They are stateless and nonlinear; that is, they can jump from one page to another randomly, without following any ...