NeoWebScript: Enabling Webpages With Active Content Using Tcl

NeoWebScript marries the world's most popular webserver, Apache, with the Tcl programming language to create a secure, efficient, server-side scripting language that gives webpage developers simple-yet-powerful tools for creating and serving webpages with active content.

The ability to embed NeoWebScript code into existing webpages, without requiring a URL name change, leverages work done with webpage creation tools such as Netscape Communicator and Net Objects Fusion, while not disturbing links from remote sites and search engines.

A mature application, NeoWebScript-equipped webservers are currently in production on the Internet, serving real-world loads of millions of webpage "hits" per day.

This paper describes the driving forces behind the creation of NeoWebScript, and how those forces shaped its design and evolution into its current-day form. NeoWebScript's software architecture is described, and its capabilities are demonstrated using numerous examples, including webpage "visitor counters", rotating banner ads, queuing email, posting news, storing form submissions into Berkeley-style dbopen databases, and creating graphical images on the fly.

Finally, NeoWebScript's current status is summarized, our near-term plans are detailed, and conclusions are drawn.