Re: What webserver to get?

On Mon, 13 Jan 1997 20:25:49 -0600, Tim Vannaman <tsv_at_flash.net> wrote:

>I'm new to webservers, so here goes...
>
>If I want to use a webserver to access an Oracle db, do I have to use
>the Oracle
>webserver or are there others? If so, what are they?
>
>I would think you could get others to work, but haven't heard of any.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Tim.

Although you can make reasonable applications with OWS (Version 2), I think of a few reasons why you might want to go for different products:
1. putting your HTML in PL/SQL procedures is slower than making Perl scripts accessing the database only on demand. This is particulary true for Windows NT.
2. The Web Listener does not give reasonable error messages on errors in the configuration file. Pre-2.03 releases even failed to restart. 3. Documentation is plain compared e.g. to Netscape 4. Why pay licence fees if you can achieve the same result with other products?

On the pro-side is, that the server is a feature-rich, commercial product with world-wide support.

Alternatives:

1. Take OWS 1.0 that comes free with the Workgroup server. Write a CGI stub that will communicate with a deamon having a permanent database connection. Using this technique, performance should be up to the level of OWS 2.0, and if you substitue the HTP packages by Perl, the whole thing should be even faster.

Do not try the OWS1.0 apporach to open a database connection per CGI call. This is awfully slow.

2. Get the apache server (recommended) or any other httpd, and use the same technique as described above.

3. Write your own httpd - not as complicated as it may sound. Get started with mhttpd or something else.

Best regards

Rainer

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Rainer Hoerbe / ARGE Netpromote
rhoerbe_at_netpromote.co.at
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