Macromedia's Flash and Microsoft's Active Server Pages technologies are two products with an extremely heavy impact on the world of web site development. Flash allows you to create zippy, vector-based animation and interactivity in a small ActiveX control, and ASP allows you to create dynamic HTML content on the fly. Hopefully, by the time you're done skimming this article, you'll be confident enough to use ASP in the creation of zippy, vector-based Flash content on the fly.

To many developers, a site done in Flash is worth many done in HTML. The ease of use and graphical appeal of Flash is unmatched. Where many of us get stuck, however, is at the question *How am I going to get data into Flash from an external source?* The answer to this question is also the key to a frighteningly successful web site.