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Topic 10 - CGI Application Theory


CGI

  • Abbreviation for "Common Gateway Interface".
  • This is an interface standard which provides a method of executing a server-side program (script) from a website to generate a webpage with dynamic content.
  • Scripts conforming to this standard may be written in any programming language that produces an executable file, but are most often written in Perl, Python, C, C++, or TCL.

 

  • The figure illustrates the interaction between client and server when the client requests a document that references a CGI script.
  • Often, CGI scripts process information gathered from a form.
  • Permission is granted within the web server (usually by the web master) for specific programs on the server to be executed.
  • These programs are typically designated with a certain filename extension (such as .cgi or .pl) and/or located within a special directory (such as cgi-bin).
  • After the application output is sent to the server through CGI, the results may be sent to the client.
  • Information received by the client is usually an HTML or XHTML document, but may contain images, streaming audio, Macromedia Flash files, etc.

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Form

  • HTML forms enable web pages to collect data from users and send the data to a web server for processing by server-side programs and scripts.
  • This type of web communication allows user to interact with the server and is vital to web development.
Name :
Age :
Gender : Male Female
Fav. Color Blue
Pink
Yellow

Sample of Form

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Programming Language

  • JavaScript:
    • A scripting language developed by Netscape to enable Web authors to design interactive sites.
    • Although it shares many of the features and structures of the full Java language, it was developed independently.
    • JavaScript can interact with HTML source code, enabling Web authors to spice up their sites with dynamic content.
    • JavaScript is endorsed by a number of software companies and is an open language that anyone can use without purchasing a license.
    • Recent browsers from Netscape and Microsoft support it, though Internet Explorer supports only a subset, which Microsoft calls Jscript.
  • DHTML
    • DHTML: Abbreviation for dynamic Hypertext Markup Language.
    • A form of HTML used to create Web page content that, as perceived by the viewer, appears to change each time it is viewed, without further interaction with the server.
    • The Web-page content may use any of several technologies including CGI scripts.
  • Java
    • A new language developed by Sun Microsystems.
    • It allows executable programs called "applets" to be distributed over the World Wide Web.
    • An applet is written in Java and that part of the code, which is system-independent, is compiled; the result is called "bytecode".
    • When a user clicks on a link that points to this bytecode, the bytecode is downloaded onto the user's machine.
    • If the user is using an appropriate Java-aware Web browser, the browser contains an interpreter (specific to the user's machine) which interprets the bytecode and allows the user to run the applet.
  • PERL
    • Practical Extraction and Report Language (PERL) is one of the most widely used languages for web programming today.
    • Larry Wall began developing this high-level programming language in 1987 while working at Unisys.
    • Wall wanted to create a language that would be more powerful than shell scripting and more flexible than C, a language with rich text-processing capabilities and most of all a language that would make common programming tasks straightforward and easy.
    • Most of the information user send to servers is text, thus Perl was a logical choice for programming the server side of interactive web-based applications.
  • ASP
    • Active Server Pages (ASP) a server-side technology that dynamically builds documents in response to client requests.
    • The ASP demonstrates communication between clients and servers via the HTTP protocol of the World Wide Web.
    • When a server receives a client's HTTP request, the server loads the document (or page) requested by the client.
    • ASP is a Microsoft technology for sending to the client dynamic web content, including XHTML, Dynamic HTML, ActiveX controls, client-side scripts and Java applets.
    • The ASP processes the request (which often includes interacting with a database) and returns the results to the client - normally in the form of and HTML document, but other data formats (e.g., images, binary data, etc.) can be returned.
  • PHP
    • PHP Hypertext Preprocessor, is quickly becoming one of the most popular server-side scripting languages for creating dynamic web pages.
    • PHP was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf to track users at his web site.
    • In 1995, Lerdorf released it as a package called "Personal Home Page Tools."
    • PHP 2 featured built-in database support and form handling.
    • In 1997, PHP 3 was released, featuring a rewritten parser, which substantially increased performance and led to an explosion in PHP use.
    • The release of PHP 4, which features the new Zend Engine and is much faster and more powerful than its predecessor, should further increase PHP's popularity.
    • PHP is an open source technology that is supported by a large community of users and developers.
    • PHP is platform independent; implementations exist for all major UNIX, Linux and Windows operating systems.
    • PHP also provides support for a large number of databases, including MySQL.

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Database

  • A database is an integrated collection of data.
  • Many companies maintain databases to organize employee information, such as names, addresses and phone numbers.
  • A database management system (DBMS) provides mechanisms for storing and organizing data in a manner consistent with the database's format.
  • Database management systems allow users to access and store data without addressing the internal representation of databases.
  • Relational databases - composed of data that correspond to one another - are the most popular database systems in use.
  • Almost all relational database systems use a language called Structured Query Language (SQL) to create queries and manipulate data.
  • Some popular enterprise-level relational database systems include Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Sybase, DB2 and Informix.


 


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