January 12, 2001, 9:30 AM — The upcoming version of the popular Apache Web server is being scrutinized by interested Web developers; it incorporates important new features to meet the intense processing requirements of today's busy Websites.
One particularly welcome addition to Apache 2.0, now in alpha release but expected to 'go beta' soon, is support for threaded multiprocess modes for basic request handling and dispatching on the Unix platform. (Windows-ready versions of Apache already supported such threading.)
Open source Apache software is very popular among Web, or HTTP, servers. According to Internet consultancy Netcraft, Apache currently holds about 60 percent of the Web server market, followed by Microsoft's IIS with about 20 percent and Sun/Netscape/AOL's iPlanet with 6.75 percent. Created by many volunteers, Apache continues to support extended and basic modules that enhance Websites' support of complex software interactions.
The new Apache features -- besides Unix multiprocess/multithreading, the list includes support for platform-specific multiprocessing modules for Windows, support for native APIs for some non-Unix platforms, and multiprotocol support -- were added for scalability and maintainability, said Ryan Bloom, senior software engineer at Covalent Technologies and member of the Apache Software Foundation.
Multiprocessing modules will provide clean tuning, Bloom said. The new version also has a Portable Runtime, which allows native functions to be used on all supported platforms. (Besides Posix-compliant Unix systems and Windows, Apache runs on BeOS and OS/2.) Added filters permit modules to modify data from other modules, he said.
Multiprotocol support means administrators can, for example, configure the HTTP server to handle FTP, according to Bloom.
New additions reduce the strain of managing multiple servers and trying to manage the content between multiple servers," Bloom said.
Better management may mean more complexity, but this is not an overriding issue, said Bloom. "The idea [with protocol modules] is that Apache is a bit more than just a Web server now. While this does make managing Apache slightly more complex, the hope is that having one slightly more complex configuration is still easier than having multiple complex configurations," Bloom said.
Apache's new request-handling methods should mean better performance on Linux and a number of other systems, said Mark Cook, director of engineering at Red Hat and founding member of the Apache Software Foundation. He added that the new version's "out-of-the-box" ability to add SSL support will make security easier to support.
"Setting up a secure Web server will no longer mean applying patches to Apache," Cook said.
While the new release will likely be welcomed by Website developers and administrators who are mounting sophisticated offerings, the fact that the Web server is on the front line means few sites will move quickly to deploy alpha, or even beta, software. "There are parts of Apache 2.0 that are very new and have not had significant testing, so it will be some time before we see sites [that] want to switch," said Cook.
The new version seems to promise improvements to Apache security, but much more is left to be done.
"In the future you will be able to download Apache 2.0 and have SSL built right in -- but just because your server has security doesn't mean it's secure. We need to make sure the users understand what they are doing and the implications of their actions," Cook said.
Cook and Bloom agree that the real source of new complexity in Website deployment is at the application level.
"Web servers have a well defined function to perform, and standards they have to meet to be compliant," Cook said. The functions supported at the Web application level are of a different breed, he said.
A good example is the Apache Cocoon project, which is an entire publishing framework. However, Cocoon -- like the Apache Web server -- does try to support standards. It is based on XML and Java technologies that integrate into the Web server, Cook said.
