What is CGI?
CGI: Common gateway interface
Allows a web server to actually run a program and return the output as the "web page". Very flexible and very useful, especially when combined with Perl or mod_perl, but can be used with C, bash, Python or a number of other languages (anything the server can run).
CGI is an older technology, and has since been superceded by the following technologies:
- mod-perl
- PHP
- JSP and servlets
- Server side Javascript
- NSAPI and IISAPI
- ASP
- J2EE Web Services
- .net web services
Although superceeded, CGI is still widely available and used, essentially because of its ease of setup and the flexibility on which programming language is used.