Java CGI vs. Servlets

java servlets cgi
Jakub Mach picture Jakub Mach · Dec 6, 2011 · Viewed 22.2k times · Source

What are the main differences between CGI and Java servlets?

Answer

Victor Sorokin picture Victor Sorokin · Dec 6, 2011

Servlets are run in one process (HTTP server with additional features, which called Servlet Container) and they exist as long as that process exists.

CGI means every time there's client request, HTTP server creates new instance of process to serve this request. This is performance killer. Additionally, since there's new process per each request, it means CGI can't aggregate data from several requests in memory, as Servlets can, and must resort to external persistent storage (file or DB). This is performance killer as well.

Related questions

"PKIX path building failed" and "unable to find valid certification path to requested target"

I'm trying to get tweets using twitter4j library for my java project. On my first run I got an error about certificate sun.security.validator.ValidatorException and sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException. Then I added twitter certificate by: C:\…

Read More
How do I import the javax.servlet API in my Eclipse project?

I want to develop with Servlets in Eclipse, but it says that the package javax.servlet cannot be resolved. How can I add javax.servlet package to my Eclipse project?

Read More
How to upload files to server using JSP/Servlet?

How can I upload files to server using JSP/Servlet? I tried this: <form action="upload" method="post"> <input type="text" name="description" /> <input type="file" name="file" /> <input type="submit" /> </…

Read More