About a new version of the Apache internet web server project

Added: 10/01/2006
The Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April, 1996. In February, 2005, the Netcraft Web Server's survey found out that more than sixty eight percent of the web sites on the Internet were using the Apache, thus, making it more widely used than all the other web servers combined. We are glad to introduce the new version of the Apache HTTP Server project of the Apache Software Foundation.

The Apache Web server is a free of charge HTTP server for the teamwork between a client and a browser, as, for instance, the MS Internet Explorer. In the beginning, this Internet web server was created for UNIX's needs, however, later, it was successfully transported into the modern operating system Windows NT.1

According to the representatives of the Apache Software Foundation, the main purpose of the Apache HTTP Server project is to provide a secure, efficient and extensible internet web server that offers HTTP services in synchronization with the current HTTP standards.

Not long ago, the Apache Software Foundation announced about the release of the version 2.0.54 of the Apache HTTP Server (widely known as "The Apache").

Let us examine some of its new abilities and improvements in the version:

We are glad to inform you that now the Apache project can run in a hybrid multiprocess and multithreaded mode in the UNIX systems with the POSIX threads support. It really improved the scalability for configurations, although, unfortunately, not for all of them.

The built system of the Apache 2.0 has been rewritten to make it similar to the other packages. Now, the autoconf and libtool are at its base.

Many confusing directives have been simplified in comparison with the Apache 1.3. Such inconvenient and difficult directives as the Port and BindAddress have been shifted. Currently, there is only the Listen directive, which is in use for the IP address binding; and the Server Name directive that specifies the server's name and the port's number only for the redirection and virtual host recognition.

 

The Apache project on Windows NT now uses the utf-8 for all the filename encodings. It solves the problem of the direct translation into the underlying Unicode file system and supplies a multilanguage support for such Windows NT-based installations, as Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

The new version of this internet web server has a specific infrastructure that is able to support the serving of the multiple protocols.

The Apache 2.0 has changed the UNIX platforms for a more convenient and popular one (BeOS, OS/2, and Windows). Their own API supports these platforms and it allows to avoid the problems with the POSIX-emulation layers.

It must be known that the Apache 2.0 includes the Perl Compatible Regular Expression Library (PCRE) and a more powerful Perl 5 syntax now.

If you have any problems, you send an error response messages to the browser. At present, they use the SSI technology, stuffed with several languages. In addition, the administrator may redact these messages for his needs.

 

The Apache modules can be written as filters, working up the dataflow that is delivered to and from the server. This method gives an opportunity to external programs to act as filters, and to the CGI programs to act as handlers.2

 

Finally, this new internet web server gives other wonderful abilities, such as an opportunity to conduct the contents of the site by means of the extended protocol HTTP, an additional support for session caching across the processes using the shared memory or a new module that allows to support the browsers, to request the content that was compressed before the delivery.

 

 

  

 

 

 


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