A few years ago I took on a new project and resolved to write the fastest CGI app I could, using C to access the Solid DB API. Forget Perl and its fuzzy crutches, efficiency is what counts, right?
Yes, it was extremely fast, until the graphic designer plopped in his nested-table layout and slowed everything down to a crawl on the client's ancient Mac. That's when I learned that server efficiency is but one of the factors that go into a web app. If you are serving very fast clients on a very fast network, then you should consider optimizing the server apps. But even then mod_perl, PHP, or ASP still stand a fighting chance against a C/C++ CGI.
The fastest path I can imagine is using the web server's API directly, and that should be done only after careful planning and consideration (and throwing hardware at the problem).
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A few years ago I took on a new project and resolved to write the fastest CGI app I could, using C to access the Solid DB API. Forget Perl and its fuzzy crutches, efficiency is what counts, right?
Yes, it was extremely fast, until the graphic designer plopped in his nested-table layout and slowed everything down to a crawl on the client's ancient Mac. That's when I learned that server efficiency is but one of the factors that go into a web app. If you are serving very fast clients on a very fast network, then you should consider optimizing the server apps. But even then mod_perl, PHP, or ASP still stand a fighting chance against a C/C++ CGI.
The fastest path I can imagine is using the web server's API directly, and that should be done only after careful planning and consideration (and throwing hardware at the problem).