When a browser is better than a GUI application, and when a CGI is best of all

[mandy]

    Writing local Web applications can be quick, easy, and efficient for solving specific Intranet problems. Understand why a Web browser is sometimes a better interface than a GUI application, and when a CGI script may be the simplest and most elegant solution.

The vast majority of Web sites you visit are presumably open to Internet access, but many companies have found that Intranet development has its place. However, you can take this further -- you can develop perfectly functional Web applications that will never send so much as a single packet over a network interface. Experienced Web developers sometimes find themselves struggling to learn a GUI toolkit when a simple CGI script would serve their needs perfectly well.

A local-only Web application is, if anything, much simpler than one intended for general use. You can easily set browser requirements, and server performance is very unlikely to be an issue. Simple applications, using standard CGI form widgets and the like, can be written in a fraction of the time required for development of self-contained applications. Applications that are built around forms or data manipulation are often excellent candidates for implementation as a trivial Web service.

In many cases, a custom application like this can provide an elegant and simple solution to a very specific problem. I once wrote a picture browser that did nothing but browse a single directory full of files from a camera and let me file the pictures into categories. This took maybe twenty lines of Perl, and the result was much faster than a more general solution, to say nothing of how long it would have taken to write a GUI application to do the same thing...

full article: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/we...01CGI-Best