Please help on Oracle WebServer admin questions

I am migrating Perl scripts (that were developed under NCSA web server) to the Oracle WebServer. I am getting stuck on the following. Any help is appreciated.

1. URL forwarding/redirection is necessary for setting up short meaningful URLs. In the WebServer administration interface there appears to be no mechanism or facility for doing the URL mapping. Does anyone know of a way?
2. The CGI/Perl scripts run external/system commands. In Perl we use value of predefined variable $? for determining the status returned from the commands. These commands in the CGI/Perl scripts run by the Oracle WebServer always return a value of 65535(in the variable $?) irrespective of success or failure. We rely upon the status value from these commands for error detection, database access failures and also record locking.
3. I played with password authentication on Oracle WebServer. I think I understand it but the documentation is not clear. So I'd like someone to confirm my understanding of sub-directory protection. For example:
   /ddts/BSD/ - means protection on virtual directory(/ddts/BSD/) and
   all its sub directories.
   /ddts/BSD/* - means protection for all files in the virtual
   directory only but not on files in sub- directories.
   /ddts/BSD/*.dat - means protection for files with extension "dat" in
   /ddts/BSD/ directory only.
   

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Thank you
Susan Jung