A Programmer's Guide to the New Software Development Paradigm
by Andrew Schulman
Chapter 9
Client/Server Made Easy
Last revised: March 31, 1997
Until now, while we've talked a lot about CGI, it's been from a
perpsective you don't normally hear about in discussions of CGI: the
user's perspective. We haven't actually written any CGI apps.
Instead, we've learned how to use <FORM> and <A HREF> and <IMG SRC>
to make use of existing CGIs. In this chapter, we'll go around to the
other side of the counter, and write some CGI apps. This requires
understanding the client/server programming model. Client/server was
supposed to be difficult, and the web quietly provided it, almost
without anyone noticing (hence the chapter's title: not "made easy"
in the sense of "for dummies 101" but in the sense that web once
again quietly provided something that the previous
software-development paradigm had said was incredibly difficult).