History
CGI is a protocol for interfacing external applications to web servers. CGI applications run in separate processes, which are created at the start of each request and torn down at the end. This "one new process per request" model makes CGI programs very simple to implement, but limits efficiency and scalability. At high loads, the operating system process creation and destruction overhead becomes significant. In addition, the CGI process model limits resource reuse techniques (such as reusing database connections, in-memory caching, etc.).
To address the scalability shortcomings of CGI, Open Market developed FastCGI and first introduced it in their webserver product in the mid-1990s. Open Market originally developed FastCGI in part as a competitive response to Netscape's proprietary, in-process API (NSAPI) for developing Web applications.
Although initially developed by Open Market, FastCGI was implemented by a number of other webserver makers. The FastCGI approach, however, competed against other techniques which also aimed to speed and simplify server-subprogram communications. Apache modules such as mod_perl and mod_php appeared around the same time, and they also quickly gained popularity. Today, all of these various approaches (including CGI) remain in common use.
Read more about this topic: Fast CGI
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