Multi-threaded APIs 7. Of course, the answer is that it depends upon the application. A more complete answer is that FastCGI often wins by a significant margin, and seldom loses by very much. Papers on computer system performance can be laden with complex graphs showing how this varies with that. Seldom do the graphs shed much light on why one system is faster than another.
Advertising copy is often even less informative.
We run a test that shows a FastCGI application running three times faster than the corresponding Web server API application. Under different conditions this factor might be larger or smaller. This paper makes no attempt to prove that FastCGI is better than Web server APIs for every application. APIs enable lightweight protocol extensions, such as Open Market's SecureLink extension, to be added to Web servers, as well as allowing other forms of server customization. But APIs are not well matched to mainstream applications such as personalized content or access to corporate databases, because of API drawbacks including high complexity, low security, and limited scalability.