Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Popular Web server software products include Apache, Microsoft's Internet Information
Service (IIS), CERN server, NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications)
server, Spinner server, Plexus server, Perl server, Tomcat server, etc.
Server-side Extensions:
A server-side extension is a software that communicates
with a Web server to handle assorted client requests. Often, the server-side extension
program acts as an intermediary between the Web server and the database, farming out
all SQL requests to the DBMS. Both the DBMS and the server-side extension program
must be ODBC-compliant. Products such as ColdFusion, Delphi, Java Studio Enterprise,
etc. qualify as server-side extension programs.
Web Server Interfaces:
Web server interfaces facilitate the display of information on
dynamic Web pages. There are two popular categories:
•
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a set of rules that specify
how parameters are passed between client programs and Web
servers. A client program that can run on a Web server is called a
script, hence the term CGI script. Common scripting languages
include JavaScript, Active Server Pages (ASP), and PHP. However,
high-level languages such as C++, Java, Perl, etc. also qualify.
•
Application Program Interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols
and tools that facilitate easy software construction. Since APIs are
typically shared code that is resident in memory (in the case of
Web technology, they reside on the Web server), they tend to be
more efficient than CGI scripts.
Extensible Markup Language (XML):
XML is a meta-language that was designed
specifically to facilitate the representation, manipulation and transmission of structured
data over the WWW. It was first published by the WWW Consortium (W3C) in 1998, and
to no surprise, has become the de facto data exchange standard for e-commerce, thus
circumventing the pre-existing problem of interoperability among different Web servers.
XML was developed from an earlier standard called the Standard Generalized
Markup Language (SGML). And as expected, other XML-based languages are emerging.
Three examples are Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), Structured Product
Labeling (SPL), and Extensible Style Language (XSL).
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP):
The original emphasis of SOAP was to
support remote procedure calls (RPC). However, the norm is for SOAP messages to be
sent by web servers as XML documents (synchronous as well as asynchronous). SOAP
messages are frequently transmitted as the data portion of HTTP (hyper-text transport
protocol) messages.
