Very Computer

I am currently investigating in the pros and cons of choosing either a
Unix machine (probably a Sun Netra mid-range model) or a PowerMac as a Web
server.

As the performance for ordinary *.html documents is more or less the same,
I wonder whether there are structural differences between the two
operating systems when it comes to the processing of CGI scripts, notably
in Perl resp. MacPerl.

Is the PowerMac capable of firing off MacPerl scripts and producing output
to different users simultaneously, perhaps even different copies of the
same MacPerl script? Or do you definitely need to have some form of a
*true* multitasking system such as Unix?

Any advise (let alone research on this) would be greatly appreciated.

--

Studies on New Media, Information and Telecommunication
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Tel. +32.2.6292415 Fax +32.2.6292861

How much is the Sun netra model? Have you thought about the benefits of
having two or three power macs serving the data (3 PPC 6100s =
~$4500-$5000) Distributed or mirrored servers, and redundancy are
attractive benefits to having three machines instead of one.

Quote:> As the performance for ordinary *.html documents is more or less the same,
> I wonder whether there are structural differences between the two
> operating systems when it comes to the processing of CGI scripts, notably
> in Perl resp. MacPerl.

Perl scripts seem to be pretty portable with the exception of those that
do system() calls and forking. The ENV variables are passed to the script
and look like the UNIX counterparts and post args are passed from STDIN.

Quote:> Is the PowerMac capable of firing off MacPerl scripts and producing output
> to different users simultaneously, perhaps even different copies of the
> same MacPerl script? Or do you definitely need to have some form of a
> *true* multitasking system such as Unix?

MacPerl can launch more than one CGI at a time, but I believe requests are
queued rather than handled simultaneously. I have a number of Perl scripts
running including error handling, forms and  dynamic pages. I cannot speak
for all situations, but I have had multiple hits on the same CGI and
different Perl CGIs and I have not seen a problem.
I think it is time to pull out pounder again and see how it does with some
acgis sprinkled in.

Larry Mills-Gahl

--
larry mills-gahl

Quote:>I am currently investigating in the pros and cons of choosing either a
>Unix machine (probably a Sun Netra mid-range model) or a PowerMac as a Web
>server.
>As the performance for ordinary *.html documents is more or less the same,
>I wonder whether there are structural differences between the two
>operating systems when it comes to the processing of CGI scripts, notably
>in Perl resp. MacPerl.

The difference is light-years apart.  We've been running a server on a
PowerMac 8100 with 40MB RAM--using MacHTTP2.0, and are finishing our
port to a Unix box.

The Mac is unbelievably easy to set up, secure as Fort Knox... and so
slow it's pathetic.  The Mac OS is not at all suited to the needs of a
component-based web server.  MacHTTP itself is quite fast--but the
problem is that web servers need more than that.  As soon as CGI
scripts enter the picture, whether using MacPerl or AppleScript, it
all fallas apart, because scripts aren't merely spawned to run in the
background: they run linearly using a single (AppleScript or Perl)
core owned by the single copy of the language.  Response times,
especially from imagemaps or forms, are terrible, and if we have more
than 5 simultaneous connections, users start getting timeouts.

There are good uses for Mac-based web servers: small sites, sites with
no technical expertise, sites distributed over multiple machines (you
can get 4 Mac 6100's for the price of a base Netra, after all...)..
But if speed and high traffic are concerns the Mac is not a realistic
choice.  Again, you can be up and running in minutes, and Chuck S. has
written a wonderful little HTTP server, but the CGI environments and
System 7.x drag it down.

Quote:>Is the PowerMac capable of firing off MacPerl scripts and producing output
>to different users simultaneously, perhaps even different copies of the
>same MacPerl script? Or do you definitely need to have some form of a
>*true* multitasking system such as Unix?

Bingo.

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s.m. koppelman