SCGI or FastCGI - What do you prefer? [closed]

Solution 1:

FastCGI is my preference. Not so much because of the technology as much as it just being used on so many shared hosting services. It's also compatible with a lot of different development languages/frameworks such as Django and PHP and works with Apache server, which is highly popular on Unix-based servers.

Solution 2:

FastCGI technically allows duplex‑multiplexing, while SCGI don't (not even one‑way only multiplexing). SCGI is OK for tiny sites with low traffic, where each request is handled fully one at a time upon completion, and in turn.

FastCGI is more common than SCGI, in other words, the FastCGI protocol is more a standard than SCGI is. The date of the last revision of the FastCGI protocol, implies nothing wrong, it's just OK to not update a protocol which does not need so.

If I may, I would just say comparing FastCGI and SCGI, is just like comparing XML and a custom serialization format such as JSON or its LISP variant. Some people complained XML is too much complex, and created their own format, said to be more simple, but which shows to be more complex than XML as things scales a bit in size or complexity. Similarly with FastCGI vs SCGI.

FastCGI is technically more resilient and robust, and that's probably the reason why it is more widely deployed than SCGI.

That said, SCGI is still at least better than CGI (the classic one‑process launch per request).

Solution 3:

Not 100% on this but my understanding is:

SCGI = easier to implement
FCGI = Better performance