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Evaluating Web software

There is a wide range of server software and related tools available, both as free software and commercially. The choice of server software depends on many factors:

• The availability of particular software for the hardware platform selected.

• Whether the organization requires outside commercial software support.

• Whether the organization has the expertise and confidence to use free software that is in general use on the Net but does not have the backup of formal commercial support.

• Whether the organization can compile the software or must have it precompiled. Being able to inspect the source code can be an advantage, providing as it does the ability to adapt the software and experiment. Other advantages of raw source code include the ability to use optimizing compilers and performance analysis tools.

• Some server programs are definitely more tried and tested than others. Under UNIX there are two main Web servers, the CERN and the NCSA HTTP daemons, both of which have been placed in the public domain. Since most major Web sites seem to use UNIX, effectively there are two major Web servers overall, but the situation is evolving rapidly and could change dramatically within a short space of time.

• Some servers are being continually improved and added to, whereas others are currently quite static, thus the functionality gap between them is widening.

• Some commercial servers (GWHIS) are reputed to have better indexing facilities than the free servers.

If you do decide to use free software that you obtained in source form and discover bugs that you can easily fix, or add in generally useful features, you may want to consider mailing these back to the developers so that they benefit the wider community. It is by this kind of cumulative, cooperative effort that the Net has evolved to its current state.

Many server-related tools, such as image map programs, are interchangeable between the servers. More detailed information about individual server programs and related tools is given in Chapter .

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.