What is a CGI PROGRAM?

CGI programs are small executables that the server that the executes in response to a request from a browser. The CGI program processes the request in code and return HTML to the browser. The difference between a CGI program and a static web page is that the HTML returned to the browser can be different based on who’s making the request, where they are, what time it is-almost anything you can think of. Fortunately, Microsoft recognized that CGI programs aren’t the most efficient way to process requests load the CGI program for each request. The underlying explanation has its rots deep in hypertext transfer protocol. An HTTP request is a short transaction between a client and a server. Neither the server nor the client remembers each other once the transaction is complete.

Imagine two people wandering through a party. Every time they pass each other they introduce themselves, have a short conversation, then drift apart, but never remember meeting each other. Alternately, consider the movie Groundhog Day, in which one continuously repeats itself. The people in the film do the same things and say the same thing each also, ASP is a defect to categorize; it isn’t development environment per se and it isn’t a language you can develop ASP pages using any of several scripting language. Similarly, you can use ASP to build simple web sites or complex applications. ASP’s major competitors in the application arena are Application server vendors, sun’s Java Server pages, Java itself, C++ ISAPI applications and, visual basic. Microsoft’s preferred tool building ASP sites front page, home site, Drumbeater, and a host of shareware and freeware site builders/HTML editors.

Application server vendors

ASP’s high-end competitors started out as web application development environments. Some of them have since metamorphosed into application server vendors. This simply means they’re bonding their application development environments as enterprise-level software-usually with hardware and service contracts. Cold fusion, Bluestone, and net dynamics are three completions in this category. All three provide HTML tag extensions pages, and deliver customized content. All are powerful solutions. The main advantage of application servers is that they make it less difficult to build complex pages that scale easily. Their main disadvantages are that they require custom server installations, they often charge by the number of clients, and may obscure the low-level details- some even hide the code –which makes it difficult to make change to differentiate your site from other built with the same packages. Java Server Pages Sun recently introduced Java Server’ page, which I believe will in the long run become ASP’s principle competition. JSPs run on several. Different web servers already, including apache, Netscape, and is servers. ASP can also run on UNIX via Chili soft’s chili! ASP product, but at the loss of some functionality. Today the glue language is ASP and it’s true that ASP as it exists today, is better suited for glue-like tasks then it is for mainstream processing, but that may change. Nevertheless, you should understand that ASP is not a low-level programming language