Why Do People Still Use and Support Classic ASP?

Have you ever noticed that lot of businesses still use Classic ASP? Given the power, scalability and overall better application design techniques available to ASP.NET, it’s hard to imagine why a developer or business may choose Classic ASP. Most modern code will be written for C# using ASP.NET components and features such as MVC Razor.

Classic ASP, unlike ASP.NET, runs under the single isolated IIS process space, known as inetinfo.exe. By contrast, ASP.NET will (by default) include a unique worker process for each application pool you have. This means that ASP.NET will be typically be much more efficient and secure at serving multiple websites on a multi-threaded basis, but may also need more resources to run.

In Classic ASP, if you include a script block that is marked as “runat=server” and this block contains some sort of function, you will be able to add code outside the scope of this function which will run as the page loads. ASP.NET however, will need this code to be in a method or function, and this will be triggered either by an event from the user (such as page load, or the click of a button) or by the server (such as ‘application restarting’).

As we’ve already touched on, Classic ASP uses only a single worker process and so also gains benefits by having a Single Threaded Apartment (STA) model which generally means less overheads and therefore better performance in most cases. By contrast, ASP.NET uses the MTA (Multiple Threaded Apartment) which is both more intensive for the system to run, but also offers up greater security, since if any are compromised due to a hack, they will not likely jeopardise each other or any other aspect of the site.

So why do so many people appear to run classic ASP when they have access to more powerful .NET? For some, a lot of time and money will have been invested in developing the  website over a few years. Rebuilding a website using ASP.NET may mean a complete rewrite in a lot of cases. It can be difficult to justify the expense and risk of rebuilding the entire website in a newer technology unless the practical benefits to the business can be easily measured and weighed up against this.

For these reasons, while we recommend ASP.NET for all newer projects, we also fully understand that for some, classic ASP may be something worth sticking with for a little while. If you are in need of classic ASP developer or have a need for classic ASP support, why not get in touch with us today?