Can ASP Classic use registration free components?

Question

Like the topic says, can ASP Classic use registration free components? This is on Windows Server 2003. If so, how do I go about doing that?

If not, could anyone please provide some alternatives?

Answer 1

By Registration Free I assume you mean DLLs that are not registered as ActiveX components using regsvr32. If that's the case then no, not directly from ASP 3.0 though you could use it remotely via DCOM using CreateObject. The reason why is without registering it there is no ProgID to reference to find the ActiveX component.

Answer 2

By alternative, I guess you don't mean components that do require registration? 'Cause there are loads of those...

A less common way of using COM with ASP that is quite convenient is to use Windows Scripting Components (WSC). From 4GuysFromRolla:

One of the biggest disadvantages of developing COM components using one of these high-level languages is the time-intensive process of altering an existing COM component. For example, say that you are developing a COM component. You add some properties and methods and start using it on your site. Now, say that you wanted to add a new method. After adding this method you would have to recompile the COM component, reregister it, and stop and restart the Web server...

To solve for this annoyance, Microsoft has created Windows Script Components, which, as their name implies, are COM components created with script! These components can be developed with any Windows scripting language (VBScript, JScript, PerlScript, Python, etc.). Since these components use script, you can literally cut and paste your ASP script into one of these scripted components! Also, you can edit a Windows Script Component's code and the changes are automatically reflected - no recompiling, no restarting the Web server, and no reregistering the component!

For more info, check out these links:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/07zhfkh8(VS.85).aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692823.aspx
• http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/050400-1.shtml