"David T. Ashley" <dta@e3ft.com> wrote:
> Because I have some heavy number-crunching scientific applications, I'd like
> to program using the C language, CGI-BIN, and with MySQL (using its
> C-language interface).

I don't see the link from "number-crunching scientific applications"
to using CGI. Heavily frequented web applications don't use CGI because
it spawns a new process per request. More common is the ->fastCGI
approach. With Apache you can even use one of the many extensions - or
write your own. The Apache API is quite straightforward. Implementing
a content handler is not much harder than writing a CGI app.

Additionally: why not PHP or Perl? Do you do numbercrunching in the
web app? If yes - most numbercrunching stuff is done in a C library
function and just called from the script interpreter. I.e. if you do
some big-integer arithmetics in a Perl script using Math::GMP, all
the cpu consuming things will be done in libgmp. Writing the glue code
in C would gain you next to nothing.

> Is there anything I should know? For example, when Apache runs a CGI-BIN,
> is there anything special about the environment (memory limits, etc.)?

Read it up in the Apache docs. Some things are configurable.


XL
--
Axel Schwenke, Senior Software Developer, MySQL AB

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