WSGI - How Does It Affect Me?

[Gregory Piñero]

So I keep hearing more and more about this WSGI stuff, and honestly I
still don't understand what it is exactly and how it differs from CGI
in the fundamentals (Trying to research this on the web now)

What I'm most confused about is how it affects me.  I've been writing
small CGI programs in Python for a while now whenever I have a need
for a web program.  Is CGI now considered "Bad"?  I've just always
found it easier to write something quickly with the CGI library than
to learn a framework and fool with installing it and making sure my
web host supports it.

Should I switch from CGI to WSGI?  What does that even mean?  What is
the equivalent of a quick CGI script in WSGI, or do I have to use a
framework even for that?  What do I do if frameworks don't meet my
needs and I don't have a desire to program my own?

Examples of how frameworks don't meet my needs sometimes:
1. Working with SQL Server (Most frameworks seem to at least make it extra work)
2. Need web app to get data from other programs via API (eg QuickBooks)
   Can any web framework work happily with win32 extensions?
3. Using IIS at all for that matter, does WSGI work on IIS, do any frameworks?

Hope this question isn't too confusing or rambling, or it hasn't been
covered before.  (it's hard to frame these questions as search terms
at least for me)

-Greg Pinero