18/02/10

Common Gateway Interface (CGI)

  - CGI programs/scripts can be written in
    pretty much any language, e.g. shell scripts,
    C programs, Perl, ...
  - When it receives a request for such a program, the server creates
    a new process, which runs the program, and the process
    is killed when the program finishes running
  - when it creates the process, the server passes
    on a bunch of environment variables
    e.g
      REQUEST_METHOD
      PATH_INFO
      PATH_TRANSLATED
      SCRIPT_NAME
      QUERY_STRING
  - when it finishes, the program passes back its output and the
    process is killed
  - advantages/disadvantages