CGI and Perl apps

[jeffsurfs]

I am dealing with an existing CGI shopping cart program. I have a few questions. If the program is in CGI is it also in Perl and do I have all that I need to program in Perl? How can I tell? I need to access a MSQL database and subtract data from the CGI from the database, I am requiring a page but I am getting a server error. Where should the require statement go, at the begining? Can anyone reccomend a good book that may help. I've been looking at CGI books, but they don't ssem to go into much detail or get to the complicated stuff.
Thanks,
Jeff

 

[tsdragon]

I'm not sure I can help with most of your questions, but I can clear up one confusion. A CGI program can be in any language that the server supports, including shell scripts. CGI is an abbreviation meaning "Common Gateway Interface". CGI is simply a specification describing how a server-side program can interact with a browser. So, a program is never "in" CGI, it's a CGI program written in perl (or whatever). Tracy Dryden
tracy@bydisn.com

http://www.bydisn.com

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[goBoating]

Please see the CGI faq452-653.

Please use descriptive titles and check the FAQs.
And, beware the evil typo.

 

[DonP]

If you want to do your developement on your PC for uploading to a Web server once the scripts are ready, you would need to have Perl installed on your system, along with some kind of Web server software, such as Microsoft's IIS (or Personal Web Server) - or better yet, Apache. If your Web server is Windows though, you should stick with IIS on your Perl developement system too. From there, you can use any plain ASCII text editor to edit the files, though personally I prefer DzSoft's PerlEditor. PerEditor is commercial software (very inexpensive) but the rest are free. Don
pc@accesscom.com

http://www.helpscc.org/

Experienced in HTML, Perl, VBScript, PWS, IIS and Apache. Run OS/2 Warp 4, BeOS v5 and Windows NT (only when I have to!)