Once you have your Isite database populated with your NBII metadata records and you are certain the database is working properly, you may notify the Clearinghouse that your node is ready to go on-line. This mailing list's intended use is to allow NBII Clearinghouse Administrator's to notify NBII Nodes Administrators of any news or software udates. If you are running a web server on a unix operating system, you probably can run Isite's web gateway software. Persons can use the form to retrieve listings of relevant metadata records and optionally download the full text. The reason there are two CGI programs is that the connection to a Z39.50 service is stateful.
Most internet connections are stateless.
Stateless means that once you submit a query, it returns the output and the connection between your computer and the server is removed. This causes problems when using an application like Isite. The Isite implementation needs to have a stateful connection, i.e., the connection from the Isite CGI program needs to be able to stay connected to the back-end Isite Zserver. Isite developers accomplished this by creating a connection HTML form. The CGI program Zcon is used to hold that connection.