CGI versus PHP, CF, ASP
Is there a distinct difference, or is CGI just something these languages use. I don't know much about PHP, CF, or ASP, but I can fiddle with a cgi script and make it workable for whatever I am working on. You can do databasing with CGI, especially with Mysql, so what makes those other languages more powerful?
thanks
bryan
Suzanne posted this at 02:39 — 17th December 2002.
She has: 5,507 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
CGI is not a language, it's a concept. CGI scripts are usually (but not always) written in Perl. When you fiddle with CGI, you're likely fiddling with Perl.
CF is a markup language that masks server-side processing. It's main advantage is that someone else has done all the hard work and you just use the tags.
PHP/ASP/JSP are embedded server-side languages, meaning you can put them right into the page, and have HTML mixed in with generated code in the same place, instead of templates and other harder-to-troubleshoot options in Perl and Java (which are purely server-side and output based on the script and everything has to be inside it).
The advantage of this is nested includes, and the ability to restructure how a page works very very easily.
Of course you can use SSI to approximate this with CGI/Perl, but it is fairly limited and cumbersome by comparison.
Renegade posted this at 07:47 — 17th December 2002.
He has: 3,022 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
funny, I always thought that CGI was PHP because when I look through some hosting sites they say ASP support and PHP Support, I guess it's not always so good to assume ... :S
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