Vocabulary of the World-Wide Web
This vocabulary list is my invention but others
seem to use almost identical vocabulary. I like to
be very precise when using these words and I will
insist on using them if you ever ask me a question.
- CGI
- The
Common Gateway Interface.
One possible programming interface from a
WWW server to an external gateway.
I also use the term to refer to a gateway itself.
- Client
-
Used loosely to refer to the user, the
WWW client, or the machine it is running on.
- Client Software
-
The WWW client (browser),
editor, robot, or whatever that is issuing requests
and handling the returned documents.
- Document
-
The item returned from a request.
It might be of any type (i.e. GIF,
HTML, plain-text). If it is HTML it
might even be a form. There is also no requirement
that the document be stored in a file. It may be
generated on the fly if the
server supports it via some form of
gateway.
- Document Type
-
An additional bit of information about a document that
describes it's format. These are expressed as
MIME types although they are frequently confused with
file extensions. The browser should take note of the
document type to determine how to display it or what
external viewer is necessary to view it.
- External Viewer
-
An external viewer is a program
which is used to view a document of a specific type.
Hopefully, the browser will launch this application when it
receives a document of the appropriate type.
- Form
-
An
HTML document which contains the FORM tag. Generally,
involves fill-in-blanks, buttons, and such. Submitting
a form typically invokes a
gateway.
- Form Data
-
The data included in a request which is the result of
the submission of a form.
- Gateway
-
A piece of software which typicall runs on a
server and provides a
sort of bridge to another piece of software,
a database, or another network protocol. A
gateway might
simply pass a request or it might create
a document from a more complicated process.
- Internet
-
The Internet is a world-wide
collection of networks (and their machines) which communicate
with each other using the TCP/IP set of protocols.
- Request
-
The information that flows from the client
to the server
in order to request a document. The request can contain
substantial information in the case of a form submission.
- Server
-
Used loosely to refer to the
WWW server or the machine it is running on.
It could also mean another kind of server.
- Server Software
-
The specific software run on a
server to respond to
requests for
documents.
- URL
- The Universal Resource Locator is like a networked
extension of the standard filename concept: not only
can you point to a file in a directory but that file
and directory can exist on any machine on the network,
can be served via any of several different methods,
and might not even be a file. It could be a query
of a database, the result of a finger command, etc.
For more information, see the
Beginner's Guide to URLs.
- WWW
-
The World-Wide Web Project, or the
collection of servers which
participates in it. It is a hyper-media collection
of documents which is accessible
on the Internet.
Paul Chamberlain