Question about EXEs and ASP

Please could someone help.

I've noticed how some pages link to an exe file on the server such as
http://www.host.com/file.exe?variable=value
like that. Is that possible on free webspace? What does that do? Can the EXEs be written with VB? What benifits does it give me? What can be returned to the browser after running these. I need to know ANYTHING about ANYTHING!!!

Thanks a lot everyone.

You said anything...

With VB6 you can create an IIS project that uses a technology called WebClasses. They essentially allow you to create your own DLL of VB code for web use. You can use some of the same objects you can use in ASPs like the Response and Request objects but in a more limited way. A WebClass projects sends HTML (or whatever) to the browser using the Response object, just like VBScript does in ASPs. When you compile a WebClass project you end up with a DLL that's has to be registered on your server and a brief ASP file that kicks the whole thing off (IE, you point users to this ASP file, which in turn kicks off the code in the WebClass DLL).

I used to do WebClasses until I learned how easy it was to do ASPs. I personally won't use WebClasses anymore because it's far easier to develop and maintain ASPs. I've also read that WebClasses are going away (won't be supported) in VB7.

Since you can write custom objects and tap into them with VBScript in ASPs you are nearly unlimited in what you can do with ASPs.

One nice thing about WebClasses is that you get the full VB IDE support for intellisense, which can be nice, and it's easier to organize highly complex and procedural code. You can also set references instead of using CreateObject, which can be nice too. Unless you use InterDev or some other similar tool to do your ASPs you don't get any kind of intellisense on your objects (and even InterDev doesn't handle all objects you might use).

There are cgi tools for VB that will allow you to hook up to a VB .exe. I used to mess with them before WebClasses but I don't remember much about them other than WebClasses are easier to deal with, and ASPs are even easier than WebClasses to deal with. The URLs with EXE in them that you are seeing could be from any language that compiles to .exe files, like C or C++.

Cheers,
Paul


[Edited by PWNettle on 11-14-2000 at 01:28 PM]