Welcome to the Netscape Commerce and Communications Servers for Silicon Graphics, Inc. The Netscape Commerce and Communications Servers let people and companies exchange information and conduct commerce over the Internet and other global networks.
The Netscape Servers Programmer's Guide documents how to use CGI with your server and how to create CGI programs. It also discusses how to start programming functions you can use in server configuration files to customize how your server works.
CGI defines an interface that lets your server run programs, making your server much more interactive with users. Instead of only sending documents, your server (using CGI programs) can process data, calculate information, perform data searches, and so on. To create CGI programs you need to know a programming language such as Pascal, C or C++ or a scripting language such as Perl.
The Netscape Application Programming Interface (NSAPI) is a set of ANSI C functions and header files that help you create functions to use with the directives in server configuration files. The Netscape Commerce and Communications Servers use this API to build the regular functions for the directives used in both magnus.conf and obj.conf (these regular functions are described in the Netscape Commerce and Communications Servers Administrator's Guide).
Because the servers use this API, you can learn how the servers work. This also means you can override the server functionality, add to it, or customize your own functions to use in addition to it. For example, you can create functions that use a custom database for access control or you can create functions that create custom log files with special entries.
These type conventions and symbols are used in this guide:
Bold—Function names, language keywords, and literal command-line arguments (options/flags).
Italics—Filenames, URLs, IRIX commands, manual/book titles, onscreen button names, and variables to be supplied by the user in examples, code, and syntax statements.
Fixed-width type—Error messages, prompts, and onscreen text.
Bold fixed-width type—User input, and literals supplied by the user in examples, code, and syntax statements (see also <>).
ALL CAPS—Environment variables, operator names, directives, and defined constants.
““ (Double quotation marks)—Onscreen menu items and references in text to document section titles.
() (Parentheses)—Following function names they contain function arguments (empty if the function has no arguments), and following IRIX commands they surround reference page (man page) section number
[] (Brackets)—Surrounding optional syntax statement arguments
<> (Angle brackets)—Surrounding nonprinting keyboard keys, for example, <Esc>, <Ctrl-D>
#—IRIX shell prompt for the superuser (root)
%—IRIX shell prompt for users other than superuser
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