Hi Craig,

I though cgi-bin was a directory that could be made specail by assigning it a virtual directory path right off the document root web virtual directory. This assigns the directory permission so it can be share over the internet. This can be done by configuring your IIS, apache, etc web server.

The cgi-bin directory is usually given script execution privileges, again throght configuring the web server. The speical user assigned by the web server is given access to this directory, usually nobody, apache on Linux, or IUSR_xyz for IIS where xyz is the name of the localhost computer. The directory is usually assigned read, write, execute permissions against various users. The name "cgi-bin" for the directory is insignificant and could just as well be any name.

Perl, in conjuction with Apache and mod_perl, uses special techniques to achieve speed and reliability. Mod_perl incorporates a Perl interpreter into the Apache web server, so that the Apache web server can directly execute Perl code. Mod_perl links the Perl runtime library into the Apache web server and provides an object-oriented Perl interface for Apaches's C language API. The end result is a quicker CGI script turnaround process, since no external Perl interpreter has to be started. Also, by configuring Apache's httpd.conf file, I can allow execution of mod_perl to compile my scripts to sub routines which it will execute directly, avoiding the costly compile process for most request.

I can use Apache::DBI to maintain persistent connection to any backend database that supports persistent connections. This is all taken care of in the background, and is handle correctly regardless of connection and disconnection code in the scripts.

The following link provide additional info.

http://modperl.com:9000/

http://www.modperlcookbook.org/

http://www.webreference.com/programming/perl/mod_perl/

Mod_perl come preinstalled in Red Hat Linux 9.0 and is ready to go right out of the box.

LelandJ