Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

Chapter 13. Building Applications

Things are going so well here at Butterthlies, Inc. that we are hard put to keep up with the flood of demand. Everyone, even the cat, is hard at work typing in orders that arrive incessantly by mail and telephone.

Then someone has a brainstorm: “Hey,” she cries, “let’s use the Internet to take the orders!” The essence of her scheme is simplicity itself. Instead of letting customers read our catalog pages on the Web and then, drunk with excitement, phone in their orders, we provide them with a form they can fill out on their screens. At our end we get a chunk of data back from the Web, which we then pass to a script or program we have written. This brings us into the world of scripting, where the web site can take a much more active role in interacting with users. These tools make Apache a foundation for building applications, not just publishing web pages.