Is your ASP engine similar to Microsoft’s ASP? Chili!Soft ASP is the functional equivalent to Microsoft’s ASP; however, Microsoft ASP runs exclusively on Microsoft’s Internet Information Server. Chili!Soft ASP lets you utilize the same development tools, and supports all the same ASP page syntax, but runs on multiple web servers including Apache, Netscape, Lotus Domino Go and O’Reilly Website Pro and multiple operating systems including IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, Linux and Windows NT/2000. Chili!Soft ASP continues to be compatible with Microsoft ASP to ensure applications developed with Microsoft ASP will run seamlessly in environments using Chili!Soft ASP.
How do you describe your relationship with Microsoft? Our relationship with Microsoft is strong and productive. They don’t sell ASP, but they are using it as an enabling platform to proliferate COM-based applications. By extending ASP’s reach on new platforms, we are strengthening and broadening the impact of that enabling technology. Microsoft continues to support our efforts. We license their VBScript and JScript engines for maximum compatibility.
Won’t hardcore UNIX developers reject ASP because it is a Microsoft technology? If they do, it’s because they misunderstand ASP and how it has evolved. Microsoft created the ASP development framework, but ASP is by no means confined only to Microsoft tools and platforms. UNIX developers can now benefit from the elegance of ASP to create robust Web sites and applications faster and cheaper than they can with anything they currently use (and with very little involvement of Microsoft tools, if desired). ASP stands on its own as a powerful, fast, and cost-effective development platform. With Chili!Soft ASP, UNIX developers can add ASP to their arsenal.
Will you continue to support ASP once Microsoft moves to ASP+? Chili!Soft will continue to support and expand its current base of customers with our cross-platform Active Server Pages implementation. We are strong believers in the power and simplicity of the ASP architecture and will continue to expand its power, functionality and platform support. Chili!Soft ASP is, and will continue to be, the solution for platform-independent ASP for a long time to come.
What is your position on ASP+? Chili!Soft will continue to keep its eyes open for technologies that our customers wish to use. It is important to note that we consider ASP and ASP+ to be two different technologies; to us ASP+ *is not* a replacement for ASP, but rather a completely new technology. Until we have more information about this new product (in other words, once it ships), we will be able to further comment on this new technology.
