Oracle Internals

Chapter 13

HTTP Listeners

Bradley D. Brown

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) listener is a process that communicates using HTTP and cycles as it waits for requests coming across TCP/IP on a specific port (or on multiple ports). The HTTP listener, generically called the Web listener, translates virtual directories into physical directory locations. HTTP listeners traditionally support two types of virtual directories, defined as “normal” and “cgi” directories. The main difference between the two is how the files are handled. When users request a file from a normal directory, the file is sent directly to the browser (e.g., an HTML file). A file requested from a cgi directory is assumed to be a program that needs to be executed, which will, ...