Designing Active Server Pages

Lesser-Known Microsoft COM Components

Microsoft has created a wide range of COM components for developers to freely use in their applications. Many of these COM components are intended for use in a number of application settings. For example, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), which were used extensively in Chapter 6, are nothing more than a collection of COM objects to aid with database access. Due to the nature of COM, ADO is not limited to use in Active Server Pages alone. In fact, ADO is commonly used in stand-alone Visual Basic and Visual C++ applications that need to access a database.

Microsoft provides a bevy of useful COM components for Active Server Pages other than ADO. In this section, we will quickly examine the basic functionality of these lesser-known COM components, and then look at how to improve their functionality with the same design techniques we’ve used throughout the first seven chapters. Table 7.1 shows a listing of the COM components included with IIS for ASP. This chapter will examine the first two, Ad Rotator and Content Linker, in detail.

Table 7-1. Installable ASP Components

Component Name	Description
Ad Rotator	Provides a random banner rotation system.
Content Linker	Useful for creating a table of contents page for a collection of related URLs. Also provides navigational functionality to step through related URLs sequentially.
Content Rotator	Randomly displays text or HTML on a web page.
Browser Capabilities	Useful for determining your visitor’s browser’s ...