Apache Week issue 297

                                APACHE WEEK
                                      
The essential weekly guide for users of the world's most popular Web server.
                          Issue 297: 7th June 2002
                                      
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       =============================================================
                                      
                                 In this issue
                                       
     * Under development
     * In the news
     * Featured articles
       
                               Under development
                                       
     The handling of request bodies in 2.0 was under discussion this
     week on the development list. The interface used by Apache 1.3
     modules to read or discard a request body has been deprecated in
     2.0 by the input filtering mechanism. The old interface is still
     supported, and was found to be causing some problems in handling
     error responses. Some fixes where committed, and patches were
     submitted to switch over more modules to use input filtering.
     
     A benchmark comparison of Apache 1.3 and 2.0 was posted this week,
     comparing the performance of the prefork MPM in 2.0 against 1.3
     under increasing client load. Only a small difference was found,
     with 1.3 coming out slightly ahead. Some informal performance
     testing of PHP with Apache 2.0 found that it was significantly
     slower than PHP with 1.3. On the subject of performance, the topic
     was raised of using a 64-bit build of Apache when using Solaris on
     SPARC processors (where normally 32-bit applications are used):
     this can also reduce server performance due to the increased
     program size.
     
     New releases of Apache 2.0 and 1.3 are expected soon, although
     there are still several issues listed as "showstoppers" for a 2.0
     release. No large changes have been committed to the 1.3 tree since
     the last release, although many fixes to mod_proxy have been made
     along with several improvements for the [1]Cygwin port.
     
                                  In the news
                                       
Updated Apache surveys

     It has been a few months since we last reported on new figures from
     the Netcraft and E-Soft surveys of web sites. Overall there has
     been little change from month to month. Netcraft find that Apache
     and servers based on Apache have around 58% market share, and
     E-Soft report over 66%. In the secure server space, E-Soft find
     Apache based servers together have just over 55% market share,
     although [2]the trends show a consistent increase in the use of IIS
     for secure sites.
     
                               Featured articles
                                       
     In this section we highlight some of the articles on the web that
     are of interest to Apache users.
     
     DevArticles presents [3]"Implementing Sensible 404 Pages With
     Apache", a tutorial about customising the 404 error page which is
     returned when the requested URL is not found by the web server. It
     uses the ErrorDocument directive in a .htaccess file to achieve
     this. It also provides a list of helpful points on the design and
     content of the custom 404 page.
     
     [4]"A HOWTO on Optimizing PHP" illustrates the performance
     difference between a PHP script tuned for scalability and one tuned
     for speed, identifies the possible bottlenecks in a system, and
     shows you how to fine-tune Apache 1.3 for PHP. Then it walks you
     through a benchmarking case study, and ends with a few examples on
     speeding up your PHP code.
     
     Chapter 10 ("Survival Gear for Web Masters") of the book, "Zope:
     Web Application Development and Content Management" is all about
     using Zope with Apache. It looks at the Virtual Host configuration
     in Apache, uses the RewriteRule directive provided by mod_rewrite,
     and supports SSL for Zope by using mod_ssl. This chapter may be
     downloaded from [5]the book's companion website.
     
     New Linux users who have no prior knowledge of Apache 1.3 at all
     may be interested to check out [6]"Apache 101". This article gives
     a brief introduction about Apache, talks about the benefits of
     using it, and skims through the installation steps.
       ______________________________________________________________
     
     This issue brought to you by: Mark J Cox, Joe Orton, Min Min Tsan
     Comments or criticisms? Please email us at
     [7][email protected].
     
     [8]Apache Week is copyright 1996-2002 by [9]Red Hat, Inc.

References

   1. http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/
   2. https://secure1.securityspace.com/s_survey/sdata/200205/index.html
   3. http://www.devarticles.com/content.php?articleId=124
   4. http://phplens.com/lens/php-book/optimizing-debugging-php.php
   5. http://webdev.zopeonarope.com/ch8-10available
   6. http://www.devarticles.com/content.php?articleId=96
   7. mailto:[email protected]
   8. http://www.apacheweek.com/
   9. http://www.redhat.com/

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