Changing CGIs into Application Servers

Sending output from the program. For a CGI, you can simply write to standard output to send back data. If you have used the Sapphire/Web API (Sa....) then this has been hidden from you. If on the other hand you have used functions like printf and fprintf then you will need to change these to SaPrintf and SaFprintf.

: These new functions (found in SaApi.h) take the same parameters as the standard C functions but will send output correctly whether the Sapphire/Web server application is CGI, Web Cartridge, NSAPI, ISAPI, or whatever.
: Other standard C output functions should be converted to an (Sa... function).

Memory cleanup. For a CGI, you can fail to free memory because the CGI will exit and clean up for you. For an Oracle Web Cartridge, NSAPI, ISAPI, or whatever application, which is a continually running process servicing many requests, memory should be free'd between requests.

: You could make sure that your code cleans up after itself. If you cannot do so due to limitations that Sapphire generated CGIs produce, you can switch your memory allocation calls to SaMalloc which takes the same parameters as malloc. Memory allocated with this call should not then be free'd, since Sapphire/Web will clean up this memory after each request. The call SaFree can be used to clean up allocated memory sooner, if that is needed, but in general using SaMalloc will require no cleaning up.

You must never mix calls to malloc() and free() with calls to SaMalloc() and SaFree() ! This is a recipe for catastrophe !

Using standard CGI environment variables. From a CGI you can use getenv to retrieve standard CGI environment variables. For a Web Cartridge, NSAPI, ISAPI, or whatever application this will not work. Use the function SaGetenv as a replacement. It takes the same parameters as getenv. For other kinds of environment variables, like the PATH you should continue to use getenv.