At 5:00 PM +0100 9/13/06, David Cantrell wrote:
On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 03:08:03PM -0700, Darren Duncan wrote:
> The word "CGI" generally speaks to an old, weak, and relatively
inefficient technology ... modern proper stuff does not spin off a
separate process for each server request; it reuses an existing
server ala mod_perl.
To me the Commong Gateway Interface means a standard method for dealing
with data supplied by the user, nothing more. It certainly doesn't
specify how you should implement it. Indeed, every mod_perl application
I've seen uses CGI.
I beg to differ. "CGI" is very much an implementation detail. It is
a gateway protocol for how 2 different processes communicate.
See: http://www.w3.org/CGI/
An HTTP server is often used as a gateway to a legacy
information system; for example, an existing body of documents or an
existing database application. The Common Gateway Interface is an
agreement between HTTP server implementors about how to integrate
such gateway scripts and programs.
And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard protocol for
interfacing external application software with an information server,
commonly a web server. This allows the server to pass requests from a
client web browser to the external application. The web server can
then return the output from the application to the web browser.
Because this technology generally requires a fresh copy of
the program to be executed for every CGI request, the workload could
quickly overwhelm web servers, inspiring more efficient technologies
such as mod_perl or ASP that allow script interpreters to be
integrated directly into web servers as modules, thus avoiding the
overhead of repeatedly loading and initializing language interpreters.
So "CGI" is absolutely not a good name for a new and modern module's
design where the module's functionality isn't CGI-specific.
-- Darren Duncan
