1.5 Should I use CGI or SSI or ... { PHP/ASP/... }


CGI and SSI (Server-Side Includes) are often interchangable, and it may
be no more than a matter of personal preference.   Here are a few
guidelines:
  1) CGI is a common standard agreed and supported by all major HTTPDs.
     SSI is NOT a common standard, but an innovation of NCSA's HTTPD
     which has been widely adopted in later servers.   CGI has the
     greatest portability, if this is an issue.
  2) If your requirement is sufficiently simple that it can be done
     by SSI without invoking an exec, then SSI will probably be
     more efficient.   A typical application would be to include
     sitewide 'house styles', such as toolbars, netscapeised <body>
     tags or embedded CSS stylesheets.
  3) For more complex applications - like processing a form -
     where you need to exec (run) a program in any case, CGI
     is usually the best choice.
  4) If your transaction returns a response that is not an HTML page,
     SSI is not an option at all.

Many more recent variants on the theme of SSI are now available.
Probably the best-known are PHP which embeds server-side scripting
in a pre-html page, and ASP which is Microsoft's version of a
similar interface.

Top Document: FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about CGI Programming
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Last Update December 05 2008 @ 00:13 AM