CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research     Web Services   Friday, 26 April 2024 Home Examples

Check-List for common problems:

• UNIX: Is your file executable ? Does it have the correct first line: "#!/usr/local/bin/perl"  ???
  Windows: Does your script have the right extension, e.g. ".pl",  ".vbs"  ???  
   
• Does you script create a valid HTML response header i.e. the very first line of your script has to be something like: "Content-type: text/html" followed by two "\n" ???
   For Perl, did you consider to use the standard CGI-module to create the according headers ???
   
• Are you sure your cgi-script is NOT creating any output to STDERR, otherwise the Web-server will display the standard  "Internal Server Error" message ?
  
     on UNIX try the following:

 ./yourScriptName.pl > /dev/null
  

If you still get some output back (e.g. 'command not found'), you can be sure that the script will fail when called via it's corresponding URL !!!
 

• If you try to access files, do you know where you are ?  E.g. when creating a log file , are sure to use the correct full path to it and are the permissions on the target-file correct ?
    
• Did you consult the relevant documentation (see below) ? 
   

Some references on the Web for additional documentation:

Perl and PerlScript:

Perl’s home: http://www.perl.org
PerlScript’s home: http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl/docs/PerlScript.html
PerlScript’s guide: http://www.fastnetltd.ndirect.co.uk/Perl/Articles/PSIntro.html

Java and Jscript:

Java’s home: http://java.sun.com/
Jscript home page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/jscript

Visual Basic and VBScript:

Visual Basic: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/technical/training.asp
VBScript: http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/vbscript

Active Server pages:

http://www.activeserverpages.com

Books:

Books and books title are available. You can view the online catalog a:
http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/support/cobs-service/