Linux.com: Writing Database Oriented Web Based Applications With Perl – Part I

“What is a web based application? A web based application is
simply an application that runs over the Internet. The programs run
on the web server and interact with the user’s browser, without the
need of installing them on the client side. Yes, we’re going back
to the old thin-client architecture that mainframes used to use
(IBM 34/36, RPG, wow, that’s really old!). Imagine the power of
this: a program that is always available, no matter where you are,
no matter when you execute it, it’s stays there, ready to use.”

“This is possible thanks to the CGI (Common Gateway Interface),
a protocol that allows scripts to run in the server side sending
the result via the web in a simple HTML output.”

“Now, a simple web based application has a little logic and some
interaction with the user. We won’t be talking about counters or
mail forms, we want to go further than that, we want our
application to interact with databases and run effectively in a
heavy traffic multiuser environment as the web is. This will be the
main subject of this series of articles.”

“This first installment is just an overview and a couple of
things to have in mind before proceeding. It’s mainly intended to
educate developers to design and document in a standard way any
application they want to implement. Some things may sound obvious,
theoretic and even silly, but it’s worth to mention them to do the
right thing from the start and, in the long run, you’ll see that
they will save you a lot of time. After this introduction we will
touch more specific and technical issues.”

Complete
Story