Web technologies short list

Server-side processing

Procedural approach

There are mainly three classes of technologies. Here is a small and not exhaustive list:

External libraries or executables written with virtually any language

• CGI: external and independent executables

  written in any programming language that can generate command-line executables (e.g. C/C++, Unix shell scripts, Perl, ...)

  page parameters are passed as command-line arguments, and the executable prints the page to the standard output

  widely accepted standard

• Server extensions: external and independent libraries

  server-specific: ISAPI (Microsoft), NSAPI (Netscape), Apache Modules, ...

  dynamic libraries written mostly in C/C++

Dedicated scripting languages (ASP, JSP, PHP, ...)

more efficient coding (purpose-specific languages), lower programming skills required 

Compatibility: ASP (Active Server Pages) will only turn on Microsoft systems. For other languages, check the compatibility with the web servers.

Often to be used within a three-tierd architecture

Whole development frameworks

Some technologies provide a very more integrated programming environment, with many toolboxes (e.g. database access, resource pooling, users identification and security, ...).

• Java server extensions (Java servlets)

  Page generators are implememted as Java classes

  Ability to use the J2EE application framework (a Sun standard implemented in many application servers, including Sybase's one).

• Other vendor-specific solutions...

Declarative approach

• XML server extensions

  XML structured data is converted (formatted) into HTML at runtime

  XML data can be static or dynamically generated by another script extension

  multiple (cascaded) transformations may occur (e.g. one for transforming raw data in body-text HTML, a second to put this body text into the corporate navigation framework, ...)