CGI essentially supports any language and can be used on pretty much any platform you like. Whilst Perl is perhaps the most common CGI language you can also use C, C++, Ruby or Python. CGI is often thoguht of as being a Unix thing, but in fact pretty much every web server supports it, including Microsoft.

ASP stands for Application Server Pages and is a Microsoft proprietary technology which whilst being well supported on the Microsoft web server it is only poorly supported on other servers and platforms.

CGI and Perl have a great relationship with some of the largest websites around being based on that technology. The lines are blurred a little these days with Perl being avilable as an integral part of the Apache server by way of mod_perl. There is a huge array of support and many complete applications. CGI/Perl is capable of pretty much anything any other programme can do, database access, external device control, talking to other programmes, you name it. Part of this is due to the fact that Perl is in fact an extremely capable general purpose computing langauge, whereas ASP is a specific Web based scripting environment which does not have the same broad support or capability.

jdtoronto