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CGI Script Installation Tutorial2.Okay. Why CGI script?
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Benny Alexander December 22, 2004
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There are times
when you might want to have some of your pages dynamic or interactive with the
site users. This can be as simple as a counter saying, 'You are the visitor no
#####', but it could also include such things as a Survey or Opinion poll based
on user input and provides the responses from some questions asked them. And the
best way you can produce results like these is with CGI scripts. There are other type of
scripts like Java Scripts that can do some things, but they have limitations and
can only work on the client- side. In other words, the scripts are interpreted
and run in the browser of the user. Whereas CGI scripts will directly interact
with the server, where your whole web site resides, simply they are server-side.
Since it works from your server you can take control over the scripts which are
running by using other server files, for example the sendmail program of Unix.
Javascripts don't access any of your other files, (for example you cannot access
a database which is in your server). Javascripts are simply inserted into your
HTML pages, which can be run by the browser. Netscape browsers don't
support VBScripts and ActiveX, so we cannot think about them now. Another
technology like ASP can be used instead of CGI but only in a Windows-NT server
and UNIX servers can't support them. We can use Java applets, but speed would be
a problem with Java applets. So, we prefer CGI scripts, though its not an easier
one. We can look forward to some other technology which can do better than all
of these technologies in the future.
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