Tom behind asktom.oracle.com talking about mod_plsql history
Here is the history..... in the beginning there was this thing called the "WOW gateway" (Web Oracle Web). It was a cgi-bin that crudely translated a url into a stored procedure call (didn't use bind variables!!! that is why I call it "crude").... It was written originally by Magnus Lonnroth of Sweeden. This became OWA (Oracle Web Agent) in version 1 of OIS (the Oracle Internet Server). It too was a cgi-bin. Later, with version 2 of OWS (OIS -> OWS, the Oracle Web Server), this OWA became a "cartridge" in OWS speak. Like a module for apache but ran in the spyglass mosaic webserver (which is what we used). At that time, some guy named -- oh wait, that was me -- wrote this thing called OWAREPL (historically archived here: http://asktom.oracle.com/~tkyte/owarepl/doc/ ). It greatly extended the capabilities of OWA giving it file upload/download, db authentication and many of the features you take for grant