In our last tutorial, we walked through the process of creating a static web page from data stored in an Access database.  That simple method of publishing web pages was adequate for environments where we want a "snapshot" of a database such as a monthly report or where the data rarely changes.  However, in many database environments the data changes frequently and we need to offer web users up-to-date information at the click of a mouse.

We can meet these requirements by utilizing Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) technology to create a dynamic server-generated HTML page that links to our database.  When we created a static HTML page, we simply asked Access to create an HTML file from our data and then we published it on our web server.  Instead of storing the actual data, an Active Server Page stores information on how to obtain the data.  When a user requests information from an ASP page, the web server reads the instructions contained within the ASP, accesses the underlying database accordingly, and then creates an HTML page that contains the requested information and returns that to the user.

Active Server Pages are a Microsoft-specific technology.  As such, you must be running a compatible Microsoft web server to use this type of web publishing.  Compatible servers include:

• Internet Information Server 3.0 with Active Server Pages on Windows NT Server 4.0

• Internet Information Server 4.0 or higher on Windows NT Server 4.0 or Windows 2000

• Personal Web Server with Active Server Pages on Windows NT Workstation 4.0 or Windows 95/98

Now, let's walk through this step-by-step process.  One of the limitations of dynamic web pages is that they can not be used to distribute reports like we did in our static web page tutorial.  They can only be used to display tables, queries and forms.  In this example, let's create an up-to-the-minute product catalog for our web users.

1.  Open the database.  For the purposes of our example, we'll once again be using the Northwind sample database and Microsoft Access 2000.  If you haven't used this sample database in the past, there are simple installation instructions located on this site.  Select it from the menu shown below and click OK to continue.

2.  Open the item you wish to publish.  When you see the database main menu, select the Tables submenu.  Double-click the Products entry in the table (as shown in the figure below).

3.  Begin the export process.  Pull down the File menu and choose the Export option.  

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