As of March 2005, the sample above has been tested on the Netscape Fasttrack web server under SCO OpenServer, as well as the Apache 2.0 web-server under Red Hat 8.0 and under Windows XP. It has not been tested under the Windows IIS web server. In theory, all web servers should support the basic CGI functionality (which has been around for a long time), but the configuration details will vary between web servers and platforms. In particular, it may be necessary to specifically enabled the ability to execute CGI scripts, as this may not be turned on, or may be limited, by default. (See the ExecCGI option on the Options directive in the httpd.conf file for Apache.)

As of this writing, the Apache web server is probably the best choice, as it is by far the most commonly used on the Internet. Besides popularity, some of the other advantages of Apache are:

• It works on several platforms, including Linux and Windows

• It is well documented (both directly by the developers and by third-party book publishers)

• Source code is freely available

• It is free to download and use