Answer: Dynamic .aspx sitemaps

According to the responses I received on the Google Webmaster Forums, it looks like Google doesn't care what the file extension is as long as... well here's the quote:

"The it doesn't matter what you use and what you call it - the content-type has to be application/xml or text/xml .

The server does what it does with that extension .aspx - it will execute the script. The script produces output in the xml format. You just need to ask your script to produce the correct header for content-type, before it starts outputting the xml content. So what the user agent gets is the output of the script. And what type it is - well, that's what content-type is for." - webado

Does that make sense to everyone? Good.

(thanks webado)

dynamic sitemaps

So we have a dilemma...

We're creating an area of the site that's going to have inventory changing on a daily basis. I need to create a sitemap for this content but don't want to be dependent on SQL jobs to spit out the .xml file(s) on a schedule basis.

I'd much rather have some dynamic version of a .aspx page that would render the XML content as soon as something, like say a spider or GoogleBot, hit it. That way, it would be the most current sitemap all the time.

The question, I've posed to message boards is if Google and other engines will allow us to submit the .aspx page or point to it in our robots.txt file.

If you got any ideas, let me know. Otherwise, I'll post their response and a link to the Google message boards.

UPDATE: here's the link to the thread.