Most of the web development frameworks that were created before ASP.NET fall into one of two following categories:

• Scripts that are interpreted by a server-side resource
• Separate, tiny applications that are executed by server-side calls

Classic ASP and ColdFusion fall into the first category. You, the developer, are responsible for creating a script file that contains embedded code. The script file is examined by another component, which alternates between rendering ordinary HTML and executing your embedded code. If you've created ASP applications before, you probably know that scripted applications usually execute at a much slower rate than compiled applications. Additionally, scripted platforms introduce other problems, such as the lack of ability to control security settings and inefficient resource usage.

The second approach, used widely by Perl over CGI (Common Gateway Interface), yields an entirely different set of problems. In these frameworks, the web server launches a separate application to handle the client's request. That application executes its code and dynamically creates the HTML that should be sent back to the client.