from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
server-side
<World-Wide Web> Processing or content generation that is done
on the {web server} or other server, as opposed to on the
{client} computer where the {web browser} is running.
An example is {server-side include} where one file is inserted
in another before it is served, rather than, say, having the
browser request the files separately and combine them using an
{iframe}. A very common kind of server-side processing is the
inclusion of data from a {database} in a web page.
There are many software environments and technologies designed
for server-side processing, e.g. {CGI}, {ISAPI}, {WebObjects}
and {ASP}.
The greatest advantage of server-side processing is that it is
independent of the many different client software environments
that exist on the {Internet}, chiefly different {web browsers}
and {operating systems}. The disadvantage is that the user
must wait for a response from the server which is a much
slower form of interaction than is possible with client-side
processing using, e.g., {JavaScript}.
(2003-12-29)