In this issue

The hot topic this week was undoubtedly the performance of 2.0; discussion centred around how to optimize the "worker" MPM which was introduced in August this year to work around some problems in the original "threaded" MPM. However, the new design still suffers from performance problems, mainly in the memory management code.

Ian Holsman published some benchmarks of 2.0- and 1.3-based servers with various patches applied, serving typical workloads in use at CNet's news.com site, concluding that

"2.0 HEAD is approaching (and in some cases exceeding) the performance of Apache 1.3"

Apache 2.0.29 was tagged in CVS this week, and a tarball should be created for testing soon.

Business 2.0 reports that "Bill Gates Gives Open Source a Boost" by releasing Windows XP with all it's clunky restrictions.

"For Web servers, an open-source program called Apache has long been the most popular program on the Internet ... In part, that's because Apache is so easily modified. The program is free, and it's a proven workhorse -- both of which make it very attractive to penny-pinching chief technology officers."

The Apache group have created their own users list for discussions about the Apache httpd server. The list is already proving quite popular, with over 100 messages since the beginning of the week. To subscribe send an empty message to users-subscribe@httpd.apache.org. You will receive a confirmation message with instructions on how to validate your subscription. More details are available about the users mailing list.

In this section we highlight some of the articles on the web that are of interest to Apache users.

Lawrence Teo explains how to set up a web-based archive for a mailing list in Issue 72 of Linux Gazette. He uses Apache as the web server, Hypermail to convert the e-mail messages stored in a UNIX mailbox file to a set of cross-referenced HTML files, and cron to update the web-based archive periodically. He assumes that those three components have been installed on your system so only the instructions on how to configure them are provided.

"You Can Get There from Here, Part 5" shows you how to install, configure, and use Rolodap on your PHP4 enabled Apache web server. You need to compile PHP4 with LDAP support for this. In case you hadn't guessed it from the name, Rolodap is an electronic version of the traditional desktop rotary file of cards, usually used for registering contact information.

Zend.com has an interesting tutorial for PHP enthusiasts who would like to implement an XML-RPC client in PHP using the XML-RPC library written by Edd Dumbill. Step-by-step instructions teach you how to create a client object, construct a request, send the request to the server, and process the response from the server. Basically XML-RPC is just XML over HTTP. HTTPS can also be used when PHP is compiled with CURL support.

O'Reilly ONLamp.com reviews PHPEd in "NuSphere's IDE for PHP Programmers" and concludes that if you don't mind parting with some money, this application will definitely help you complete your PHP coding faster. PHPEd features a text editor, code debugger, tools that help integrate PHP with the MySQL database, and time-saving wizards for creating HTML and JavaScript. Unfortunately it does not support integration with other databases. Other companies that produce IDEs for PHP are Zend and ActiveState.

Thanks to everyone who entered our competition to win a metal Apache feather from Australian firm Silicon Breeze Pty. The lucky 10 winners have been notified and their feathers will be winging their way to them soon. If you didn't win you can still get your hands on cute Apache jewellery, but you'll have to get out your credit card. A percentage of the profits go directly to the Apache Software Foundation.