AppWeb HTTP Server ™ Product FAQ

If your question is not answered here, please see the Support FAQ, and the AppWeb tech support FAQ.. You may submit your question to the online community support Forum.

Questions

1. What are the advantages of PHP vs ESP vs CGI vs EGI?

2. Does AppWeb support MS ASP?

3. If I'm using AppWeb as a stand-alone web server, can I use the GPL?

4. Can I disable features to minimize memory footprint at run-time?
   

 

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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. The memory amounts are in addition to the core Appweb memory size which is typically 200-400K.

	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	4MB+	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.