• Glossary

Glossary

Access A commercial desktop database for Windows developed by Microsoft. A runtime version of the database engine is included with Visual Basic.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) A standard that encodes 128 common English characters by using 7 of the 8 bits in a byte. It also describes the file format of text files.

Application Programming Interface (API) The set of functions provided by the operating system as a service to programmers. Using an API is easier than having to develop the capability from scratch and helps to ensure some consistency across all programs that run on a given operating system.

API See Application Programming Interface.

Archie This search utility keeps a database of FTP servers and the files that each has available. The Archie client queries the Archie server that keeps the database. Archie servers can also be queried by e-mail or by Telnet. There are a few dozen archie servers on the Internet. This tool works best if you have some idea of the filename that you are looking for. It will return a list of domain names of anonymous FTP sites where the string you entered is contained within directory names or filenames.

ASCII See American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) A new data transmission technology that can deliver super-high throughput of 155–622 Mbps.

ATM See Asynchronous Transfer Mode.

Backbone Nation-wide or international connections (usually T3 bandwidth) that provide the basic structure and IP packet routing on the Internet. Regional backbones (usually T1 bandwidth) provide the connections and IP packet routing for several local area ISPs.

Bandwidth The difference between the highest and lowest sinusoidal frequency signals that can be transmitted across a transmission line or through a network. It is measured in Hertz (Hz) and also defines the maximum information-carrying capacity of the line or network.

Bridge A network computer or device that contains two-link layer interfaces and listens to all packet traffic on both networks to determine that packets should be allowed to pass between the two.

Byte See Random Access Memory.

C C is a very popular general-purpose programming language invented in the late 1960s by Dennis Ritchie at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

C++ C++ is a very popular general-purpose and object-oriented programming language invented in the early 1980s by Bjarne Stroustrup at AT&T Bell Laboratories. C++ compilers will also accept most programs written in standard C.

Cairo Cairo is the code name (made public for marketing reasons) of the next major release of Windows NT, currently expected to be released in late 1996. One major enhancement likely to be included is "Distributed OLE," which will enable programs to function more efficiently and cooperatively on networks.

Canonical Name (CNAME) See DNS Alias.

CCITT See Consultative Committee for International Telephone and Telegraph.

Central Processing Unit (CPU) The microprocessor, or brain, which performs most of the calculations necessary to run a computer program.

CERN The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) invented the World Wide Web to share information among research groups.

CGI See Common Gateway Interface.

Channel Service Unit/Data Service Unit (CSU/DSU) These are frequently packaged together as one device. A CSU/DSU is used for interfacing with a T1, Frame Relay, or ISDN line. In some cases, it is bundled inside of the router, such as the Ascend Pipeline router for ISDN. It serves much the same purpose for high-speed digital lines as a modem does for analog phone lines. (You could call it the digital analog of the modem.) It resides between your computer (or router) and the phone company data line that leaves your building.

CNAME See DNS Alias.

Common Gateway Interface (CGI) CGI is an interface for external programs to talk to the HTTP server. Programs that are written to use CGI are called CGI programs or CGI scripts. CGI programs are typically used to handle forms or perform output parsing not done by the server. See also WinCGI.

Common Logfile Format The common logfile format is used by most Web servers to enter information into the access logs. The format is the same among all of the major Web servers, including Netscape Commerce and Communications servers, CERN httpd, and NCSA httpd. The EMWAC HTTPS does not follow the Common Logfile Format.

Consultative Committee for International Telephone and Telegraph (CCITT) Regulates world-wide data communications standards. Recently renamed the Telecommunications Standards Sector, which is a body of the International Telecommunications Union.

CPU See Central Processing Unit.

CSU/DSU See Channel Service Unit/Data Service Unit.

Daemon Pronounced day-mon. Any program that runs in the background waiting to be used by other programs. Also known as a server.

Data Communications Equipment (DCE) DCE devices most often reside between the computer and an external data source. The most familiar kind of DCE device is the modem. The computer is usually considered a DTE (Data Terminal Equipment) device. Communications software running on the DTE (computer) must activate the DTR (Data Terminal Ready) signal on the DCE (modem) whenever the software and the computer are ready for further data transmission. The DTE and DCE are usually connected through an RS-232C interface and a UART.

Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) See Data Communications Equipment.

DCE See Data Communications Equipment.

DHCP See Dynamic Host Control Protocol.

DLL See Dynamic Link Library.

DNS See Domain Name System.

DNS Alias A DNS alias is a hostname that the DNS server knows points to a different host—specifically a DNS NAME record. Machines always have one real name, but they can have one or more aliases. For example, www.yourdomain.domain might be an alias that points to a real machine called realthing.yourdomain.domain where the server currently exists. DNS aliases, are sometimes referred to as CNAMEs or canonical names.

DNS Name Servers In the DNS client/server model, these are the servers containing information about a portion of the DNS database, which makes computer names available to client resolvers querying for name resolution across the Internet.

Document root A directory on the server machine that contains the files, images, and data you want to present to users accessing the server.

Domain Name System (DNS) A DNS is used by machines on a network to associate standard IP addresses (such as 204.252.2.5) with hostnames (such as www.FBSolutions.com). Computers normally get this translated information from a DNS server, or look it up in tables maintained on their systems.

DTE See Data Terminal Equipment.

Dynamic Link Library A file that contains a collection of subroutines or resources for use by Windows programs or other DLLs. Windows needs to load only one copy of the DLL into memory regardless of how many running programs will take advantage of it. Windows itself consists almost entirely of DLLs.

Environment Variable A list of variable bindings. When evaluating an expression in some environment, the evaluation of a variable consists of looking up its value in the environment.

Ethernet Refers to the standard developed by Digital Equipment Corp, Intel Corp, And Xerox Corp in 1982. It is the predominant standard in Local Area Networks today. Ethernet uses the Carrier Sense, Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) access method. Ethernet is also covered by the IEEE 802.3 standard.

FAT See File Allocation Table.

FDDI See Fiber Distributed Data Interface.

Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) A high-speed (100 Mbps) network cabling technology that is immune to Radio Frequency Interference from other electrical sources and protected from the possibility of electronic eavesdropping.

File Allocation Table (FAT) The file system used by MS-DOS through version 6.22. FAT is famous for the fact that it limits filenames to 8 characters with 3 characters for the file extension. Although the primary file system in Windows NT is NTFS, FAT is also available in NT for backward-compatibility. The file system in Windows 95 is a superset of FAT, called VFAT which permits long filenames.

FTP See File Transfer Protocol.

File Extension The last section of a filename that typically defines the type of file (for example, .GIF and .HTML). For example, in the filename index.html the file extension is html. .HTM is also commonly used as the extension for HTML files.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) A protocol that governs file transfers between local and remote systems. The programs that use this protocol are referred to as FTP clients and FTP servers. FTP supports several commands that enable bidirectional transfer of binary and ASCII files between systems. The FTP client and server programs on NT are installed with the TCP/IP connectivity utilities. Note that the client that comes with NT is a command-line version.

File Type The format of a given file (for example, a graphics file doesn't have the same internal representation as a text file). File types are usually identified by the file extension (for example, .GIF or .HTML).

Firewall A security device placed on a LAN to protect it from Internet intruders. This can be a special kind of hardware router, or a piece of software, or both.

Frame Relay A data transmission technology becoming more popular as a means of replacing expensive T1 leased-lines in wide-area networks. Frame Relay can be purchased in units more appropriate for anticipated network traffic, it can be scaled up or down over time, and it can be used without predefining multiple point-to-point connections.

FQDN See Fully Qualified Domain Name.

Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) Hostnames with their domain names appended to them. For example, on a host with hostname webserv and DNS domain name yourco.com, the FQDN is webserv.yourco.com.

Gateway A gateway is a network computer which is running software for more than one network interface. The gateway manages the flow of data between the two networks according to routing tables.

GIF See Graphics Interchange Format.

Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) A cross-platform image format originally created by CompuServe. GIF files are usually much smaller in size than other graphic file types (such as .BMP and .TIF). GIF is one of the most common interchange formats, and is readily viewable on many platforms.

Gigabyte See Random Access Memory.

Gopher The Internet program invented at the University of Minnesota for distribution of text files that are selected through character-based menus.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) This describes the method of interaction that a program offers to its user. A GUI permits mouse and keyboard control, as opposed to a command-line interface, which requires keyboard entry. Most Windows 95 programs include a GUI with user-friendly buttons, menus, and scrollbars. Console applications can only be run in the Windows 95 DOS Prompt window.

GUI See Graphical User Interface.

Home Page A document that exists on the server and acts as a catalog or entry point for the servers contents. The location of this document is defined within the servers configuration files.

Hostname A name for a machine of the form machine.subdomain.domain, which is translated into an IP address. For example, www.FBSolutions.com is considered a hostname or a Fully Qualified Domain Name. This machine, www can be either a unique machine (or host) in the subdomain (or network), or it can be an alias (or CNAME) to another machine in the subdomain (or network).

HTML See HyperText Markup Language.

HTTP See HyperText Transfer Protocol.

HTTPD An abbreviation for the HTTP daemon, a program that serves information using the HTTP protocol. UNIX-based HTTP Servers are often called HTTPDs.

HTTPS The PC world abbreviation for the HTTP server, a program that serves information using the HTTP protocol.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) HTML is a formatting language used for documents on the World Wide Web. HTML files are plain text files with formatting codes that tell browsers, such as Netscape Navigator, how to display text, position graphics and form items, and display hypertext links to other pages.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) The standard method for exchanging information between HTTP servers and clients on the Web. The HTTP specification lays out the rules of how Web servers and browsers must work together.

IDE See Integrated Drive Electronics.

Imagemap A process that enables users to navigate and obtain information by clicking the different regions of the image with a mouse. Imagemap can also refer to a CGI program called imagemap, which is used to handle imagemap functionality in UNIX-based httpd implementations.

Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) Defines the standard IBM PC bus.

Integrated Digital Services Network (ISDN) Essentially operates as digital phone line. ISDN delivers many benefits over standard analog phone lines, including multiple simultaneous calls and higher-quality data transmissions. ISDN data rates are 56 Kbps to 128 Kbps.

Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) A standard disk drive adapter designed for the PC ISA.

InterNIC The organization charged with maintaining unique addresses for every computer on the Internet using the domain name system.

Internet Protocol (IP) The protocol that governs how packets are built and sent over the network. IP does not guarantee packet delivery or the order of delivery. TCP runs on top of IP to provide a reliable, and sequenced internetwork communication stream. See also Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).

Internet Service Provider (ISP) The company that provides you or your company with access to the Internet. ISPs usually have several servers and a high-speed link to the Internet backbone.

Intranet Most commonly used to describe a corporate network (LAN or WAN) that uses TCP/IP and related application layer protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, POP3. An Intranet doesn't necessarily include a permanent connection to the Internet. Intranets can be used for publishing company documentation internally.

IP See Internet Protocol.

IP Address An Internet Protocol address is a set of four numbers (4 bytes, or 32 bits) separated by dots, which specifies the actual location of a machine on the Internet.

ISA See Industry Standard Architecture.

ISDN See Integrated Digital Services Network.

ISINDEX Documents can often use a network navigator's capabilities to accept a search string and send it to the server to access a searchable index without using forms. To use ISINDEX, you must create a query handler.

ISMAP ISMAP is an extension to the IMG SRC tag used in an HTML document to tell the server that the named image is an imagemap.

ISP See Internet Service Provider.

Key An entry in the NT Registry Editor that contains a unit of configuration information.

Kilobyte See Random Access Memory.

Megabyte See Random Access Memory.

LAN See Local Area Network.

Local Area Network A group of computers and peripheral devices that are wired together for the common good of all users. This is usually done in an office environment for the purpose of sharing files and printers. Typical LAN sizes range from 2 to 100 computers.

Listserv or Listserver A server application which allows groups members to broadcast e-mail messages amongst themselves. An individual sends a single e-mail message to the server, which in turn sends it to all the other members of the listserv group.

MIME See Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions.

Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) This is an emerging standard for multimedia file transfers on the Internet via e-mail or the Web.

Multi-Threaded A programming technique that allows for more than one part of a program to be executing simultaneously on an SMP machine. Even on single CPU computers, multi-threaded programs can show the advantage of better responsiveness to user commands while a lengthy background process is running.

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) A research organization at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. NCSA is credited with the invention of Mosaic, the world's first graphical Web browser. Internet popularity has skyrocketed in the years since 1993 following the availability of Mosaic for desktop computers such as PCs and Macintoshes.

NCSA See National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) This is the protocol Usenet runs to deliver newsgroups. There are thousands of newsgroups on the Internet. Each one is similar to a bulletin-board devoted to a particular topic that its readers like to discuss.

NNTP See Network News Transfer Protocol.

NTFS See NT File System.

NT File System (NTFS) This is the advanced file system that NT provides as an option when formatting hard drives. The advantages of this system are long filenames, reduced file fragmentation, improved fault tolerance, and better recovery performance after a crash (as compared to DOS or OS/2.

Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) The API developed by Microsoft on which much of the Windows 95 user interface is based. Originally intended only to provide a means of treating documents as objects useable by other documents, it has since been expanded to include cut-and-paste functionality, the capability to program component objects from applications, store files and directories within compound files, and serve as the basis for distributed objects via remote procedure calls in the Cairo version of Windows NT.

ODBC See Open Database Connectivity.

OLE See Object Linking and Embedding.

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) The database-independent API developed by Microsoft to provide application developers with a portable means of writing database programs. Database vendors supply low-level drivers conforming with the interface to ODBC.DLL. Application programmers make standard calls to ODBC.DLL to access any database regardless of its proprietary format.

PCI See Peripheral Component Interconnect.

PDC See Primary Domain Controller.

Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) PCI is a local bus motherboard design from Intel. It is designed to compete with the industry consortium that developed VESA local bus (VLB.) It runs at half the speed of the main CPU, as opposed to a constant 6 MHz rate for the standard PC ISA bus and the VESA local bus. Its performance outshines VLB in many respects. It is becoming very popular in new Pentium based systems despite some early glitches in its career.

PERL See Practical Extraction and Report Language.

Ping A TCP/IP program that is used to verify network connections between computers and to time how long packets take to traverse the route.

POP, POP3 See Post Office Protocol.

Post Office Protocol (POP, or POP3) Defined by RFC 1721, POP3 is an application-level protocol designed to handle the mail at a local level. The POP3 mailbox stores mail received by SMTP (the routing agent) until it is read by the user. It also passes outgoing messages to the SMTP server for subsequent delivery to the addressee.

PPP See Point to Point Protocol.

Point to Point Protocol (PPP) An industry standard that is part of Windows 95 Dial-Up Networking and Windows NT Remote Access Software (RAS) that allows you to connect to the Internet. Because it offers greater performance, PPP has widely replaced SLIP for remote Internet connections.

Port A connection or socket used to connect a TCP/IP-based client application to your server. Servers are normally known by their well-known port number as assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The well-known port for HTTP is 80.

Practical Extraction and Report Language (PERL) Perl is a programming language designed for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information, and printing reports. Perl programs are called scripts because they are processed by an interpreter, as opposed to a compiler.

Protocol A set of rules and conventions by which two computers pass messages across a network.

Proxy Server A computer program that runs on a server placed between a LAN and its connection to the Internet. The proxy server software will filter all outgoing connections to appear as if they came from only one machine. The purpose for doing this it to prevent external hackers from knowing the structure of your network. The system administrator may also regulate the outside points to which the LAN users may connect.

RAM See Random Access Memory.

Random Access Memory (RAM) The physical semiconductor-based memory in a computer. One byte of RAM can hold one character, such as the period at the end of this sentence. One kilobyte (KB) holds 1024 characters. One megabyte (MB) of RAM holds one million characters (actually 1024 * 1024). Not counting graphics, this book consists of about 300,000 characters, or 1/3 of a megabyte. One gigabyte (GB) is equal to one thousand megabytes. Yes, that's a lot, and no, it isn't always enough. Terabytes (TB) are not discussed very commonly yet, but just so you know, 1 TB equals 1000 GB.

Redirection A system by which clients accessing a particular URL are sent to a different location, either on the same server or on a different server.

Registry The Windows 95 system database that holds configuration information for hardware, software, and users.

Resource As it pertains to HTML, this refers to any document (URL), directory, or program that the server can access and send to a client that asks for it.

Request for Comments (RFCs) The official documents of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) that specify the details of all the protocols and systems that comprise the Internet.

RFC See Request For Comments.

Robot For our purposes, we are referring to software robots on the Web. These applications wander the Internet looking for Web servers and return indexing information to their host. Robots are most often used to create databases of Websites. The Lycos search Web page database is maintained by the Lycos Robot.

Router This is a special-purpose computer used for connecting two or more networks together. Most routers enable you to create a physical connection between different types of networks such as Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI.

SCSI See Small Computer Systems Interface.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) This is a software interface developed by Netscape that provides for encrypted data transfer between client and server applications over the Internet. SSL, STT (from Microsoft and Visa), and S_HTTP (which is a secure version of the HyperText Transfer Protocol) are all means of enabling secure commerce on the Web.

Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) SLIP is an industry standard protocol that encapsulates IP packets for transmission through modems. It is one of the available protocols when using TCP/IP with RAS.

Server In general, refers to a computer that provides shared resources to network users. In some specific cases, related to the Internet, server refers to the TCP/IP application layer protocol server, such as HTTPS.

Server Root A directory on the server machine dedicated to holding the server program, configuration, maintenance, and information files.

SGML See Standard Generalized Markup Language.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) A standard protocol in TCP/IP that determines how e-mail is transferred on the Internet.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) A standard protocol in TCP/IP that determines how networks are monitored for performance.

SLIP See Serial Line Internet Protocol.

Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) Pronounced scuzzy, this is a type of hardware interface standard for computers and peripheral devices. It is general-purpose, but most often is used for hard disk drives, CD-ROM drives, and scanners. SCSI is supported on many platforms. SCSI and IDE drives and controllers can operate together in the same system. Up to seven SCSI devices can be daisy-chained together on one controller card. (But the card itself counts as one device.) Although IDE (or EIDE) remains more popular for PC hard drives because of price, SCSI drives usually offer better performance—especially many of the new varieties of SCSI, such as SCSI II and Fast-Wide SCSI. One Wide SCSI adapter can daisy-chain up to 13 devices.

SMP See Symmetric Multi-processor.

SMTP See Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.

SNMP See Simple Network Management Protocol.

SSL See Secure Sockets Layer.

Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) This is ISO standard 8879:1986 for Information Processing Text and Office Systems. HTML is an application of this standard.

Switched-56 This is a circuit-switched technology with a throughput of 56 Kbps. It has been the middle-ground between analog phone lines and dedicated T1 lines prior to the development of ISDN.

Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP) A computer architecture in which more than one CPU is running and sharing memory simultaneously. This capability does not exist in Windows 95, but Windows NT is designed to take advantage of SMP hardware both inside the operating system and at the application level through the creation of separate threads using the WIN32 API.

T1 A data transmission medium capable of 1.544 Mbps. Lines can be leased for private or corporate use between two designated points. Some Internet Service Providers offer it.

T3 A data transmission medium capable of 45 Mbps. It is usually only in the Internet backbone or in large institutions.

TCP See Transmission Control Protocol.

Telnet A protocol where two machines on the network are connected to each other and support terminal emulation for remote login. A remote computer running a Telnet client application can execute any console based application on an NT Telnet server.

Terabyte See Random Access Memory.

Timeout A specified time after which a program should give up trying to finish an operation with a remote machine that appears to be non-responsive.

Token Ring An IBM network arranged in a circular topology in which a circulating electronic token is used to carry the active packet. A node on the network must wait until the empty token passes by before it may insert a message onto the LAN. Token Ring is covered by the IEEE 802.5 standard.

Top-level Domain The highest category of hostname classification, usually signifying either the type of organization the domain is (for example, .com is a company, and .edu is an educational institution), or the country of its origin (for example, .uk is the United Kingdom and .jp is Japan).

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) A connection-based Internet protocol responsible for breaking data into packets, which the Internet Protocol sends over the network. TCP provides a reliable and sequenced internetwork communication stream.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) The Internet protocols used to connect a world-wide internetwork of universities, research laboratories, military installations, organizations, and corporations. TCP/IP includes standards for how computers communicate and conventions for connecting networks and routing traffic.

UDP See User Datagram Protocol.

Unicode A 16-bit character encoding system that covers all the symbols in all the languages of the world and several currency, science, and mathematics symbols. Windows 95 includes limited support for Unicode. Windows NT uses Unicode internally for all strings and filenames, and provides a set of Unicode APIs so that application developers can more easily build international programs.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) Also commonly called a location. This is an addressing system that locates documents on servers. A client uses the URL to request a document to be viewed. The format of a URL is [protocol]://[machine:port]/[document]. An example is <A HREF="http://www.FBSolutions.com/default.htm".

Uninterruptible Power Supply(UPS) See UPS.

UPS A battery-operated power supply connected to a computer to keep the system running during a power failure.

URL See Uniform Resource Locator.

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Runs on top of IP to provide more efficient, but less reliable, packet delivery than TCP. UDP is used for certain Internet programs such as Trivial File Transfer Protocol and Ping.

VERONICA This gets its name from Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives. Veronica is a utility for searching gopher databases. It is accessed as a menu item displayed by a gopher server. The data returned by Veronica is displayed as yet another menu of gopher menu items that match the given search topic.

VESA Local Bus(VLB) This is a popular type of PC local bus defined by the Video Electronics Standards Association. Most VLB machines can support two or three such devices. Peripheral cards in the VLB expansion slots operate with far less overhead than standard cards. It is most frequently used for EIDE hard-drive controllers or VGA display adapters—two devices that are heavily dependent on data throughput rates.

VLB See VESA Local Bus.

Virtual Memory A software technique, often implemented in the operating system, which uses hard disk space to increase memory capacity beyond the amount of physical RAM present. Windows 95 will automatically reload virtual memory from the hard disk into RAM at the instant that an application calls for it. This is not to be confused with a RAM Disk, which is a program that uses RAM to serve as a fast disk drive.

Virtual Reality Markup Language(VRML) VRML is a draft specification that describes how to implement support for virtual-reality scenes on the Web. It builds on the foundation of HTML, but it is a new language. Like HTML, the language is not binary-restricted to any particular platform. With virtual reality support, clients will be able to traverse 3-D Web pages.

Visual Basic A point-and-click programming environment from Microsoft for development of Windows programs in the BASIC language. It is popular for its ease of screen design. It includes the Access database engine.

VRML See Virtual Reality Markup Language.

WAIS WAIS is a subset of the Z39.50-88 protocol that enable remote WAIS clients to conduct searches of server databases that have been prepared using a waisindex tool.

Win16 The 16-bit Windows API that was developed in Windows version 1.0 and extended through Windows For Workgroups version 3.11. It is called 16-bit because it usually uses 2 bytes to represent programming objects such as integers, references to windows, and pointers to memory.

Win32 The 32-bit Windows API that was developed in Windows NT version 3.1 and extended through Windows NT 3.5x and Windows 95. It is called 32-bit because it usually uses 4 bytes to represent programming objects such as integers, references to windows, and pointers to memory. The Win32 API is a much richer and more robust API than Win16. In many cases, programs written for Win16 are very upwardly compatible with Win32.

WinCGI A new Common Gateway Interface for Windows GUI programs that doesn't require console-mode programs. Many Windows HTTP server packages include a reference implementation in Visual Basic that demonstrates the simple retrieval of CGI environment variables. See also Common Gateway Interface.

Windows 95 The desktop operating system from Microsoft for home and business application software running on PCs. Windows 95 is the all-in-one successor to DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

Windows NT The portable, secure, 32-bit, preemptive multitasking member of the Microsoft Windows operating system family.

Windows NT Server As a superset of Windows NT Workstation, Windows NT Server provides better centralized management and security, advanced fault tolerance, and additional connectivity options.

Windows NT Workstation The less expensive version of Windows NT.