Re: Speaking of servers with API's...

On Fri, 26 Jan 1996, Doug McKee wrote:
> Luke Gonze writes:
> > If performance is an issue, binding C code directly into the server is a
> > major win over cgi.  Spyglass has a toolkit to do this for $75000.  Netscape
> > has a set of api's that come with any server.  Cern, of course, comes with
> > source code, although it's _highly_ inscrutable.  I dont know about the use
> > of visual basic, though.  If you can make a dll with it, it should be doable. 
> Tony Sanders writes:
> > The Apache server has an API, and you can have it for $0.  And it's
> > one heck of a server with an open development group to boot.
> 
> If you're interested in web servers with API's, you may want to check
> out NaviSoft's NaviServer.  

Looks pretty nice, there are some things there we want to add to Apache, 
like the transport protocol interfaces, so SSL, SHTTP, PCT, perhaps even 
HTTP-NG can be plugged in as modules instead of patches like 
currently.

So, I count at least 4 mentioned in this thread alone: Spyglass, NSAPI, 
Apache, Navisoft, and there is Microsoft's ISAPI.  Is there any interest 
in perhaps converging?  finding common ground?  

The ISAPI is interesting in that there is little functionality which is not
addressed by David Robinson's CGI draft - in fact, since David was
careful to not tie CGI too strongly to the fact that it was started as a
bourne shell interface, one could argue that CGI could proto-describe a C
interface as well. 

There are actually a couple of different ways to approach this - API's could
be separately ironed out for basic object interfaces (i.e.  CGI/ISAPI), a
transport protocol interface, a metainformation/repository interface, etc. 

I sent mail to a list of server authors asking if there was interest in a 
CGI and server-API BOF at the LA IETF - if you are interested, please 
respond privately, so I can get a headcount to justify it to the area 
directors.  If there truly is no interest in server-API standardization, 
well, fine, we'll just go our Babylonian ways.  :)

	Brian

--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--
brian@organic.com  brian@hyperreal.com  http://www.[hyperreal,organic].com/

Received on Saturday, 27 January 1996 02:28:41 UTC