Top Document: FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about CGI Programming Previous Document: 1.4 Should I use CGI or JAVA? Next Document: 1.6 Should I use CGI or an API? See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge CGI and SSI (Server-Side Includes) are often interchangable, and it may be no more than a matter of personal preference. Here are a few guidelines: 1) CGI is a common standard agreed and supported by all major HTTPDs. SSI is NOT a common standard, but an innovation of NCSA's HTTPD which has been widely adopted in later servers. CGI has the greatest portability, if this is an issue. 2) If your requirement is sufficiently simple that it can be done by SSI without invoking an exec, then SSI will probably be more efficient. A typical application would be to include sitewide 'house styles', such as toolbars, netscapeised <body> tags or embedded CSS stylesheets. 3) For more complex applications - like processing a form - where you need to exec (run) a program in any case, CGI is usually the best choice. 4) If your transaction returns a response that is not an HTML page, SSI is not an option at all. Many more recent variants on the theme of SSI are now available. Probably the best-known are PHP which embeds server-side scripting in a pre-html page, and ASP which is Microsoft's version of a similar interface. User Contributions:Top Document: FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about CGI Programming Previous Document: 1.4 Should I use CGI or JAVA? Next Document: 1.6 Should I use CGI or an API? Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: Nick Kew <nick@webthing.com>
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:12 PM
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