There are many different interfaces available with applications on Web Servers, as explained below:
ISAPI (Internet Server API)
ISAPI is an extended programming interface for interactive applications executing on Microsoft's Internet Information Server (stated as IIS hereafter) Web Server, and was first proposed by Microsoft. NetCOBOL provides ISAPI and its execution codes, which are encapsulated according to the COBOL language specification. ISAPI subroutines provide functions for more easily developing ISAPI applications to be executed on IIS.
ISAPI resembles CGI in that CGI is a programming interface for developing interactive applications to be executed on Web Servers, but differs from CGI in overall resource usage, including CPU and memory as well as performance. For details of the differences between ISAPI and CGI, see "Differences between ISAPI and CGI" in this manual.
CGI (Common Gateway Interface)
CGI is the most commonly used interface for data input/output with Web Servers.
Most Web Servers support CGI.
NetCOBOL provides COBOL CGI subroutines as functions for more easily developing applications using CGI.
