This text is right before the call to Server.Execute.

This text is right after the call to Server.Execute.

The target script ("server_target.asp")

If you've been using ASP for any length of time, you've almost certainly used Response.Redirect to move a user from one page to another. While Response.Redirect gets the job done, it unfortunately requires a round trip to the client browser. While there are some situations where this is necessary, more often then not you can accomplish the task more efficiently using Server.Execute.

While Response.Redirect accomplishes its task by telling the browser to look elsewhere, Server.Execute does its work on the server by simply transferring execution to the script passed to it as a parameter. When that script finishes execution, control returns to the calling page. For example, this page is called server_execute.asp. While the sentences before and after the green section are in this file, the green section itself is actually contained in the file server_target.asp. Notice that while server_target.asp was executed, your browser never left server_execute.asp like it would have if we'd used Response.Redirect.

One important note is that while execution passes from server_execute.asp to server_target.asp and back, the page context remains the same. What this means is that calls to things like Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME") will continue to return server_execute.asp even if they are actually in the server_target.asp file. Similarly, if you transfer execution to a different directory, the client browser won't know that so things like <img> tags in the target script may need to be adjusted so that the browser can still find the intended targets.