Intro to Apache - ApacheCon CGI shortcomings CGI is slow. This is a consequence of CGI itself, not a consequence of the particular programming language you choose. The process must be launched from scratch every time. This takes a long time. The speed of your CGI program is almost irrelevant, because that is not where the time is being spent. Resources like database connections, shared libraries, etc, must be created and reloaded every time. No persistence of state. Every request, you must build everything again - who is this person, what is their history, etc.
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ApacheCon : Intro to Apache - Slide #89 of 139