CGI

Common Gateway Interface , A set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software (the 'CGI program') talks to the web server.

Any piece of software can be a CGI program if it handles input and output according to the CGI standard. Usually a CGI program is a small program that takes data from a web server and does something with it, like putting the content of a form into an e-mail message, or turning the data into a database query. CGI "scripts" are just scripts which use CGI. CGI is often confused with Perl, which is a programming language, while CGI is an interface to the server from a particular program.

Perl is an application of CGI, as well as MIVA, Python, PHP3, and other scripting languages. A CGI program can be written in any language like Perl or C/C++ and it is often stored in a special directory like /cgi-bin .

CGI allows you to create interactive forms, process orders online, and much more.
  • CGI
  • 0 Users Found This Useful
Was this answer helpful?

Related Articles

Co-Location

Network Operations Centers offer the ability for customers to place their webservers and other...

Certificate

Digital ID used for SSL transactions. It includes owner's public key, the name of the owner, the...

Certificate Authority

A company trusted by a browser maker that issues digital certificates that are supposed to...

C/C++

Popular programming languages (C++ includes objects) that can be used to create server programs...

cgi-bin

The most common name of a directory on a web server in which CGI programs are stored. The 'bin'...