Processing or content generation that is done
on the
web server or other server, as opposed to on the
client computer where the
web browser is running.
An example is
server-side include where one file is inserted
in another before it is served, rather than, say, having the
browser request the files separately and combine them using an
iframe. A very common kind of server-side processing is the
inclusion of data from a
database in a web page.
There are many software environments and technologies designed
for server-side processing, e.g.
CGI,
ISAPI,
WebObjects
and
ASP.
The greatest advantage of server-side processing is that it is
independent of the many different client software environments
that exist on the
Internet, chiefly different web browsers
and operating systems. The disadvantage is that the user
must wait for a response from the server which is a much
slower form of interaction than is possible with client-side
processing using, e.g.,
JavaScript.