Hi, and thanks for trying out this BETA. Of course it's been used and abused on a small number of internal and local sites I have access to but it's when it gets into the wider world and environments and uses I've never thought of, that the real testing begins. The original year-end development has undergone considerable refinement over the past three months and it appears fairly stable but as with any BETA (1 in particular) I could only recommend it not be put into production sites.
Thanks again and looking forward to your comments ;^)
Search the new Technical Overview
Major revision from the 6.1 documentation includes Chapters 6 & 7.The main thrust of this revision was extended file specification (ODS-5) support, although a check of the changes.html page shows a number of other features have been added.
No changes to a site's environment are required to support this BETA, despite the documentation indicating otherwise. For instance, it mentions a change from .HTA and .HTL to .$HTA and .$HTL file types for the authorization databases. This is not in effect for the BETA. The old file types will continue until the final release. Also the new HTTPD$MSG file required is included in the [.HTTPD70] directory and it's location hard-wired into the server code. Hence it is possible to swap a site back and forth fairly rapidly between the 6.1 and 7.0 HTTPD.EXE.
There are some new HTTPD$CONFIG configuration directives (and a couple that have changed names, backwardly compatible). These can be added to the site's current HTTPD$CONFIG file if the you wish to experiment with the new facilities. If/when returning to v6.1 that version will just ignore them (although report as warning - unknown). Some need to be added to enable the full features of 7.0.
[CgiStrictOutput]
[DirBodyTag]
[DirMetaInfo]
[Opcom...]
[ReportBasicOnly]
[ReportBodyTag]
[ReportMetaInfo]
[Scripting]
[SearchScriptExclude]
[ServerAdmin]
[ServerAdminBodyTag]
[ServerSignature]
Comments
The extended file specification required extensive modifications to the way RMS is interfaced, essentially a layer of abstraction needed to be introduced between the server code and RMS. This does not seem to impact server performance significantly. The possibility of file names now containing HTML-forbidden characters (such as the "&") and URL-forbidden characters (such as the space) required a re-think of the way file specifications and server-generated output was produced (and not only in the obvious location of DIR.C, but almost everywhere). The consequent approach has been a local abstraction of the SYS$FAO() service.
Hence, not only has every use of RMS needed to be reworked but also almost every message generated by the server! This revision has turned into a major rework of much of the HTTPd code and why it's jumped from 6.1 to 7.0.
All relevant scripts have also also been modified to support ODS-5 (e.g. HyperShelf, HyperReader, Conan, etc.). These are not included in the BETA release though.
Build
To reduce the amount of work required by myself and ease the supply of fixes as problems are reported and fixed I decided not to supply object code modules with these BETAs. You will be required to build the server using DECC v5.n or v6.n (if this is an issue for any site that really wants/needs to try the BETA then contact me). Then an INSTALL of the new image and restart is all that's required. It is recommended to rename the existing server image to facilitate a simple and rapid movement between the two as necessary.
$ RENAME HT_EXE:HTTPD.EXE;* HT_EXE:HTTPD_6.EXE;* $ SET DEFAULT HT_ROOT:[SRC.HTTPD70] $ @BUILD_HTTPD $ INSTALL REPLACE HT_EXE:HTTPD.EXE $ HTTPD == "$HT_EXE:HTTPD" $ HTTPD/DO=RESTART
or for an SSL image (using the current OpenSSL 0.9.4)
$ RENAME HT_EXE:HTTPD_SSL.EXE;* HT_EXE:HTTPD_SSL_6.EXE;* $ SET DEFAULT HT_ROOT:[SRC.HTTPD70] $ @BUILD_HTTPD SSL $ INSTALL REPLACE HT_EXE:HTTPD_SSL.EXE $ HTTPD == "$HT_EXE:HTTPD_SSL" $ HTTPD/DO=RESTART