In this issue

This week there was discussion about the Apache 2.0 proxy module. The proxy module is not implemented as a proper filter, so it isn't currently possible to add additional filters to the stack. Another side effect is that the Content-Length header gets removed from all items being proxied. The Content-Length header is useful for browsers and plugins so that they know how much data to expect and can show progress information to the user.

Brian Pane continued his performance drive, finding that one of the most time-consuming non-syscall functions in Apache 2.0 was in the prep_walk_cache() function. Meanwhile Sander Striker revised the pools locking code, one of the main performance issues found during the recent benchmarking. The new code yielded a substantial increase in throughput.

After the recent security issues with versions of Apache prior to 1.3.22, two more Linux distributions have issued security advisories and updated their versions. Red Hat (see the advisory) released an updated set of package that includes Apache 1.3.22. Mandrake (see the advisory) released an update to Apache 1.3.22 as well as fixing some other security issues caused by their particular distribution.

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

Ken Coar is musing again, this time over sourceless Apache Distributions. "Although the Apache licence permits [re]distribution without the inclusion of the source, I was very surprised to find that the sources are no longer included in the 'binary' packages available from the Apache site itself."

Are you a snob when it comes to application servers? Do you subscribe to the notion that infrastructures based on PHP or Perl aren't good enough for enterprise solutions and that only J2EE with EJBs will suffice? "It Don't Amount to Beans" debunks this perception by analysing the pros and cons of both setups. The author's preferred solution is Tomcat which integrates very nicely with the Apache web server. Don't forget to click on link for the sidebar, "The Cat's Out of the Bag", for more information about Tomcat.

"Using PHP to Develop Three-Tier Architecture Applications - Part 1" kicks off with an overview of the basics of multiple tier design. It then introduces PEAR DB and Smarty, two PHP tools that will help you manage the interactions between the tiers of your application, and ends with a listing of the PHP scripts used in the examples provided.

Leigh Dodds reports on the current status of the Apache XML project in "Far from Patchy Progress". Did the open source community and the commercial development teams at Sun and IBM work well together? What are the new projects available? What does the future hold for Apache XML? Read this and you shall find out!