eWeek: Apache 2.0 Trumps IIS

AK47 writes "eWeek has a very positive review of Apache 2.0, entitled "Apache 2.0 Beats IIS at Its Own Game." They recommend the native Apache version on Windows over IIS for production use, citing superior security with no loss in performance."

Comments

Every time

[SkulkCU]

"unfriendly administration interface"
looks to be the only negative thing they could say about it.

In fact, it seems to be the only bad thing I ever hear these days about most open source programs.
What the hell is going on? Do we need to hire some UI consultants from Microsoft or something?

Applefans: I'm kidding

Re:Every time

[archen]

"unfriendly administration interface"

looks to be the only negative thing they could say about it.

Yeah, and I'd say that's a matter of opinion too. So what if I have to go a (gasp) config file. I mean the apache config files are very well commented, clear, and pretty easy to understand. So I don't have cute buttons and whirly-gigs on my administration interface - trust me I won't cry myself to sleep at night. My main problem with IIS is that the configuration tools never seem to work quite right, or take forever to do _anything_.
Of course I'm pretty biased since I've always had good results with Apache. I've also never been all that impressed with the MS config tools using MS specific terminology which I have to look up in help files to figure out what they're talking about (yeah, my fault for not learning it).

Re:Every time

[Anonymous Coward]

Another major advantage of .conf files people seem to be forgetting.

You can back 'em up as easy as 'cp'.

Then edit the hell out of whatever.conf.

If something goes wrong revert to the backup while you browse search online for the reason why. The Apache community provide much more informative online support than say Micro$oft.

When you do find the answer online its in the form of "add this to httpd.conf" rather than Microsoft Charades(tm) e.g. click this scroll down to that, check something else, lather, rinse repeat.

I work primarily with Japanese operating systems and don't even know what half the terms Microsoft use for their interface components mean so solutions offered online are pretty much useless.. but something like :

AuthUserFile /usr/local/etc/httpd/users

now that makes sense.

I find asp to be better for dynamic content

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a Forune 500 company as a web designer. In the past, we ran a dynamic intraweb for all of the developpers to chat about current projects. We did this at first using Perl under Apache. Performance sucked! Page load times would sometimes top out at 30 seconds. And it had uptimes that were as poor as slashdots. We eventually switched over to asp/iis on NT4. Page load times dropped to approximately 3 seconds, and the uptimes increased tenfold. And to top it all off, asp is not a nightmare to program in! Based off the very easy to use VB, I had the pages ported in a matter of minutes. What's not to like?

Apache is consistently underrated by the media

[graveyhead]

I've always found it frustrating that the superior products produced by the Apache foundation are so sorely underrated by the mainstream media. Buzzwords like "BroadVision" and "WebSphere" are pounded into the heads of middle management by way of large advertising budgets. The truth is, however, that I can do anything a BroadVision developer can do *with no software cost whatsoever*

Cocoon is a brilliant publishing system which combines many of the Apache projects: Xalan for XSLT transformations of all kinds, FOP for building dynamic PDFs (don't pay Adobe but use their format anyway :-) from XSL:FO, Batik for building dynamic SVGs, and a ton of library code that makes building dynamic websites very easy.

Not to mention, Apache has provided us with solid implementations of *many* w3c and Java specifications, including SOAP for XML based RPC, and JServ and Tomcat Java servlet engines.

My point is only this: appreciate The Apache Foundation because they totally rock!

Re:So Lets See

[JordanH]

Not only that, but you can trade:

• Free

For:

• "All configuration and administration is done by editing .conf files

If you buy the product your Apache from Covalent. They offer all kinds of Enterprise services to support Apache, too, so there goes the one about Apache not having a support organization behind it like IIS.

Re:So Lets See

[doorbot.com]

Obviously the point-and-click interface is far too limited for configuring. I'd like to present my "think and type" method of input, patent pending of course. If you'd like to license this technology, please type me up an email. Please note that in doing so I will be forced to charge you (retroactively) for previous use of my technology.

But seriously, is editing a file such a big deal? What did people do with DOS and autoexec.bat files? Cower away in fear?

Re:How well can it run ASP?

[mikerackhabit]

Well, you could ask the folks at Apache::ASP.

From their website:

Apache::ASP provides an Active Server Pages port to the Apache Web Server with Perl scripting only, and enables developing of dynamic web applications with session management and embedded perl code. There are also many powerful extensions, including XML taglibs, XSLT rendering, and new events not originally part of the ASP API!

Sounds pretty good to me. Of course, I don't use much ASP so I don't really know what most 'hard core' m$ shops would need support for to be convinced to switch.

Look for mod_aspnet

[Anonymous Coward]

ASP.NET from the Microsoft.NET SDK is only loosely bound to IIS. There is one .dll (like an Apache module) that fowards all ASP.NET requests from IIS to a seperate HTTP Handler for C#/VB.NET ASP pages. Some people are all ready working on mod_aspnet to do the same forwarding under Apache.

L8ers IIS :)

Re:Yeah but..

[RageMachine]

I work on several Linux boxen running PHP at a local ISP. I don't get paid as much as the 'shop techs'. Im living proof that your statement is partialy false.

Re:IIS6

[glob]

i hate to say this, but from what i've read of ii6, it looks like microsoft are finially listening to sysadmin.

check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/03/IIS 6/IIS6.asp

the main things that jump out at me are it uses xml as their metabase (finially i can use my perl scripts to *eaisly* maintain iis sties) and ftp *finially* supports chroot.

Re:PHP 4.X support.

[shri]

As the article says. If you're running a 1.current release of Apache on Linux, there is no significant reason to switch over.

On Unix, don't expect a big performance boost with the new release. In tests of Apache 2.0 vs. Apache 1.3.24 running on Red Hat Inc.'s Red Hat Linux 7.2, performance was nearly identical (though still very good). However, platforms such as Solaris and AIX, where a process switch is relatively slower than it is on Linux, will benefit much more from Apache 2.0's hybrid process/thread design.

You got it backwards...

[alexhmit01]

I figure this is a joke, but far too many slashdot posters seem to think they understand accounting.

When you purchase software licenses, you are making a capital purchase, that will take at least 3 (and often 5) to depreciate. So the cash all flows out at once, but you have to write it out over 3 years.

Money spent on consultants look great on the balancesheet because they are expenses (and therefore written off immediately), plus they are considered one-time costs for public companies, and don't count as operating expenses. By creating permenant one-time costs (each one one-time of course), they are able to make their financials look better than they are.

With free software, your costs may be the same, but they are billed as consulting fees or maintenance agreements. All of those costs are easily considered either one-time costs or as regular costs. There are no capital expenses that need to be depreciated.

Alex

Re:How well can it run ASP?

[FattMattP]

Apache::ASP provides an Active Server Pages port to the Apache Web Server with Perl scripting only

Then it's not very useful. Apache::ASP only implements the ASP framework. The majority of ASP scripts written are in VBScript. If Apache::ASP only supports Perl then you're going to have to port all of your legacy VBScript based ASP pages to Perl. You might as well rewrite them in PHP or C at that point.

When people ask if it supports ASP, they usually mean, does it execute ASP pages that contain code in VBScript or Microsoft's JScript.

Re:free ASP support would switch small shops

[StoneTear]

The IIS patches aren't on liveupdate, you have to go get them

Re:How well can it run ASP?

[crisco]

When people ask if it supports ASP, they usually mean, does it execute ASP pages that contain code in VBScript or Microsoft's JScript.

Don't you go to COM controls when you hit the bounds of ASP performance or when you need a feature and don't have the time to write it in VBScript and nobody has open-sourced something? I don't think it matters what languages the Apache ASP modules support, you're almost going to have to re-do a serious web application from scratch when you change platforms.

Are you high??

[nobodyman]

Funny, I've also worked with both, and have come to the opposite conclusion.
PHP is cryptic and slow. Just check out the stats on the shootout pages. PHP routinely gets stomped in the tests by perl, Java, Ruby and Python. Seeing as how you can write an ASP in perl, vbScript, or ECMAScript, I dare say an ASP solution would win as well.

It integrates seemlessly with MySQL, compared to ASP-MSSQL/Access where I had to define a dsn connection with several lines of code

Several? Try two.

set myConnection = server.createobject("adodb.connection")
myConnect ion.open "dsn_name"

There are reports taht PHP runs faster than ASP, but I haven't ran my own tests.

Sorry. ASP is a framework, PHP is a language. I seriously doubt that PHP has that much of an edge over vbscript, but if I decide to write an ASP with C#, your PHP script is *doomed*.

The good folks at www.php.net give a full documentation of the language, as well as a tutorial. Try finding that on M$ website
Gee, okay. Try the microsoft scripting page. Wow, full docs and tutorials.

If you are going to migrate over to the non-microsoft side of web development, go with Ruby or Python. They are faster and more robust than PHP (and VBScript, for that matter), and are far easier on the eyes (call me crazy, I like my variables names to resemble actual words... whats wrong with you php/perl people?).

Re:free ASP support would switch small shops

[DavidJA]

The IIS patches aren't on liveupdate, you have to go get them

That is BULLSHIT you have no idea about what you are talking about, and it appears the moderators have no idea either.

The last 10 patches (from MS02-18 to MS02-006) have ALL appeared on Windows Update at the same time or before the Microsoft security update is e-mailed.

No benchmarks?

[cpeterso]

Did you read the entire article? There was a link near the end that said "Click here for the test results" and it pointed directly to some nice graphs.