AppWeb™ Product FAQ
If your question is not answered here, please see the Support FAQ, the AppWeb tech support FAQ, the code FAQ, or the licensing FAQ. You may submit your question to the online community support Forum.
Questions
What are the advantages of PHP vs ESP vs CGI vs EGI?
Does AppWeb support MS ASP?
If I'm using AppWeb as a stand-alone web server, can I use the GPL?
Can I disable features to minimize memory footprint at run-time?
Answers
What are the advantages of PHP vs ESP vs CGI vs EGI?
PHP is a high functionality, standard page creation environment. It is suitable for enterprise application development. ESP stands for Embedded Server Pages and it is unique to AppWeb. It is suitable for creating user interfaces for embedded products. CGI stands for the Common Gateway Interface and it is the legacy extension interface for running external programs to generate dynamic data. It is standard but slow. EGI stands for the Embedded Gateway Interface and is unique to AppWeb. It is an in-memory replacement for CGI.
We recommend using ESP for embedded applications and PHP for enterprise applications. EGI is provided but in most cases, ESP provides a better solution.
The following table may help summarize the differences:
|
CGI
|
EGI
|
ESP
|
PHP
|
Handler
|
| Target Use |
Legacy dynamic pages and forms |
In-memory form processing |
Dynamic embedded web pages and forms |
Enterprise web pages and forms |
Custom URL processing |
| Typical memory footprint |
External program |
10K plus form code |
50K plus ESP code |
1-2MB |
Handler code |
| Performance |
Slow |
Very fast form processing |
Very fast page and form processing |
Fast page and form processing |
Fastest possible |
| Advantages |
Standard in wide-use |
Simple fast forms processing |
|
Large base of PHP code and developers |
Allow any URL handling desired |
| Disadvantages |
Slow. Limit to forms. Can't design page WYSIWYG |
Limit to forms. Can't design page WYSIWYG |
Open source, but still specific to AppWeb |
Large memory footprint |
Must build functionality |
Does AppWeb support MS ASP?
Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) and ASP.NET are proprietary MS page creation standards. AppWeb does not support them at this time.
If I'm using AppWeb as a stand-alone web server, can I use the GPL?
Yes. If you distribute your application and you choose the GPL AppWeb license, then you must also make all your source code available to others. If you want to keep your source code private, Mbedthis provides commercial licenses for that purpose.
Can I disable features to minimize memory footprint at run-time?
Yes. AppWeb loads URL handlers, scripting engines and other functionality via a run-time module loading mechanism. Via the AppWeb configuration file, you can selectively enable the loading of function modules. For example, if you don't require CGI, comment out the "LoadModule cgiHandler." directive.
If you have any further questions, please go to the AppWeb community support Forum.
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