(Via Sean Hull)

When it comes to Web development these days, you have a lot of options. Many of these methods involve preprocessing—that is, embedding code into HTML pages with special tags that signal to a preprocessor that they contain code, and that it should do something with it. Much like a CGI, this code is then run on the server, and it returns some content, which then assumes part of the shape of the resulting HTML page sent back to the browser. Both the open source scripting language PHP and languages within Microsoft's ASP.NET framework fall into this category; JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Perl/Mason operate this way as well. More

Sean Hull is the senior consultant at his firm, iHeavy Inc., in New York City. He focuses on integrating open source technologies with commercial technologies such as Oracle, and has serviced many successful New York companies.