In this issue

Apache's logging directives were under scrutiny this week, as a proposal was made to drop the TransferLog and CookieLog configuration directives from 2.0, given that the CustomLog and LogFormat directives can be used to achieve the same effect. The "%C" token in a LogFormat format string was introduced in 2.0 to log cookies; for instance "%{sessionid}C" would expand to the value of a cookie named "sessionid" in the request. Opinions were divided on whether removing the directives would reduce or increase the complexity of configuring logfiles.

A new 2.0 release (2.0.30) was about to be tagged for testing, but last-minute problems on Windows 9x platforms caused a delay. It was subsequently discovered that the live server at apache.org had been occasionally generating high load averages since it was upgraded from 2.0.29, so the release may be postponed further.

In other news, Ian Holsman continued benchmarking 2.0, by comparing the 2.0.29 release with CVS HEAD; this revealed that while HEAD had better performance, 2.0.29 survived better under heavy load. The performance increase was attributed to Sander Striker's new memory pools code.

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

"Hangin' with Tomcat" shows you how to install Tomcat, run it in stand-alone mode, integrate it with the Apache web server, configure mod_webapp, implement and deploy a simple Web application which combines servlets, JSPs, and static content. It also explains terms such as servlet, servlet container, and JSP but does not cover the installation of a Java Development Kit (JDK).

Here's another article on Tomcat - a step by step guide on making Tomcat work with Apache. It configures Tomcat 4.0 (also applies to version 4.0.1) as the application server while serving static pages on Apache running on Linux, provides a list of possible problems with the solutions, and walks you through the server.xml file line by line.

The Developer Shed kicks off the new year with a three-part case study on building a Web-based mail client using PHP's built-in POP3 functions. This first installment talks briefly about the basics of designing applications, and introduces you to PHP's IMAP and session management functions with examples of code to illustrate its points.

This tutorial teaches you how to build a Web-based time management billing system that stores billing information in a database using MySQL and PHP. You'll learn how to write PHP scripts to generate reports, use table relationships to access relevant data, and manipulate the information in the database.