Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2015 - Manual (Page 541)

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Dynamic sites, pages and web forms
Last updated 6/3/2015
When the web server receives a request for a static page, the server reads the request, finds the page, and sends it to the
requesting browser, as the following example shows:
A Web browser requests static page. B Web server finds page. C Web server sends page to requesting browser.
In the case of web applications, certain lines of code are undetermined when the visitor requests the page. These lines
must be determined by some mechanism before the page can be sent to the browser. The mechanism is discussed in
the following section.
Processing dynamic pages
When a web server receives a request for a static web page, the server sends the page directly to the requesting browser.
When the web server receives a request for a dynamic page, however, it reacts differently: It passes the page to a special
piece of software responsible for finishing the page. This special software is called an application server.
The application server reads the code on the page, finishes the page according to the instructions in the code, and then
removes the code from the page. The result is a static page that the application server passes back to the web server,
which then sends the page to the requesting browser. All the browser gets when the page arrives is pure HTML. Here’s
a view of the process: