Robert Martin McCool (born 1973), more commonly known as Rob McCool, is a software developer and architect. McCool was the author of the original

NCSA HTTPd NCSA HTTPd is an early, now discontinued, web server originally developed at the NCSA at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign by Robert McCool and others. First released in 1993, it was among the earliest web servers developed, follo ...

web server, later known as the

Apache HTTP Server The Apache HTTP Server ( ) is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software, released under the terms of Apache License 2.0. Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache So ...

, and until Apache version 2.2,

files as distributed contain comments signed with his name. He wrote the first version while he was an undergraduate at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...

, where he was working with the original

NCSA Mosaic NCSA Mosaic is a discontinued web browser, one of the first to be widely available. It was instrumental in popularizing the World Wide Web and the general Internet by integrating multimedia such as text and graphics. It was named for its support ...

team. His twin brother, Mike, also attended the university and would join the Mosaic team to work on a port of the Mosaic software to the

Macintosh computer The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

. The brothers received their

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

s from the university in 1995. They went to

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

at the

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, or IMSA, is a three-year residential public secondary education institution in Aurora, Illinois, United States, with an enrollment of approximately 650 students. Enrollment is generally offered to inc ...

(class of 1991) and Robert was awarded its Alumni Trailblazer Award at its inaugural award event during its 20th anniversary celebration on April 20, 2007. One of Robert McCool's many contributions was in drafting the initial specification of the

Common Gateway Interface In computing, Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is an interface specification that enables web servers to execute an external program, typically to process user requests. Such programs are often written in a scripting language and are commonly ref ...

(CGI), in collaboration with others on the www-talk mailing list, and providing a reference implementation of CGI in version 1.0 of the

web server. The CGI specification, introduced in December 1993, turned out to be a key element in making the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

dynamic and interactive. McCool was an early

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

employee, contributing to

Netscape Enterprise Server Oracle iPlanet Web Server (OiWS) is a web server designed for medium and large business applications. Previous versions were marketed as Netscape Enterprise Server, iPlanet Web Server, Sun ONE Web Server, and Sun Java System Web Server. Oracle ...

(e.g., NSAPI) and other server-side systems. Later, at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, he co-authored the TAP and KDD systems for automatic augmentation of human-generated web content. He is also the author of various journal and conference articles pertaining to semantic search, semantic web, and knowledge provenance. McCool lives in

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; ...

References

External links

* at

Knowledge Systems Laboratory Knowledge Systems Laboratory (KSL) was an artificial intelligence research laboratory within the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University until 2007, located in the Gates Computer Science Building, Stanford. Work focused on knowledge r ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mccool, Robert 1973 births American computer programmers Free software programmers Living people American twins Grainger College of Engineering alumni Netscape World of Warcraft players