Hi experts,

In my opinion, web server is responsible to deliver content to client. If it is static content like pictures and static html document, web server just deliver them as bitstream directly. If it is some dynamic content that is generated during processing client's request, the web server will not generate the conetnt itself but call some external proram to genearte the content.

AFAIK, this kind of dynamice content generation technologies include the following:

• CGI

• ISAPI

• ...

And from here, I noticed that:

...In IIS 7, modules replace ISAPI filters...

Is there any others? Could anyone help me complete the above list and elabrate on or show some links to their evolution? I think it would be very helpful to understand application such as IIS, TomCat, and Apache.

I once wrote a small CGI program, and though it serves as a content generator, it is still nothing but a normal standalone program. I call it normal because the CGI program has a main() entry point. But with the recenetly technology like ASP.NET, I am not writing complete program, but only some class library. Why does such radical change happens?

Many thanks.