Looking Back
CGI was quite a breakthrough in the early days of the World Wide Web. It was the first enabling technology that let people create truly dynamic Web pages. Before CGI was implemented in NCSA HTTPD, Web sites were simply collections of static files. The Web was a valuable resource, but without CGI there were no search engines, connections to existing databases, or Web-based gateways to other Internet services.
CGI provided a simple way to build these new features into the Web interface and made the Web a much better place to do research, conduct electronic commerce, or even just look for interesting reading. In fact, thanks to CGI and its descendants, the Web now provides a common interface to what once were custom applications, like ...
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