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.