Web Server Survey - WebSite Pro

Student Name: David Heise
Student ID: 86197
Course: INSY426 Internet Authoring
Due Date: 19 June, 1997

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Features
3. Reviews
4. Pros and Cons

1. Introduction

Choosing a Web client software product to review was made easier by the fact that I had used one in a previous project. To choose a Web Server software package, I started with an Infoseek search on "web server software". The 5th hit was a reference to Library of Congress Brief Guides to the Internet: Setting up a Web Server, which had links to a number of useful resources, including a comprehensive market share survey at Netcraft Web Server Survey and a feature comparison of 100 of server software at Web Compare. I chose WebSite Pro, because it is not one of the most well-known top 3 or 4, but it still made it on to the June Web Server chart from Netcraft.

Web Server Survey TOTAL com uk net pl hu ro bg
TOTAL 1117255 666619 66735 47219 2848 1287 408 159
Apache 489695 310186 20211 22290 1531 609 208 88
Microsoft-IIS 167759 104780 3226 10821 525 214 60 27
NCSA 68278 30435 1830 2504 227 155 38 15
Netscape-Enterprise 50423 29804 1388 1563 130 34 30 4
Netscape-Commerce 37359 25137 2479 914 23 13 1 1
Netscape-Communications 36244 22576 1140 902 69 16 10 1
WebSitePro 28265 19778 2281 930 6 1 1 0

Servers with more than 5000 sites - June 1997

WebSite is developed by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., and has its own site with links to ordering instructions, support, product news, etc.

2. Features

O'Reilly & Associates have prepared an informative overview of the features of WebSite Pro, and a detailed features listing in the developer's Features page for this product describe its features in greater detail. The WebSite Pro server runs on Intel platforms running Windows 95 or Windows NT. The following series of tables were developed from data found at http://webcompare.internet.com/.

Operating Systems
Windows NT: Yes
Windows 95: Yes
Windows 3.1: No
Windows NT CPUs: Intel

Launching and Logging
Can run from inetd (Unix and OS/2 systems only): Not applicable
Can serve different directory roots for different IP addresses: Yes
Runs as Windows NT service and/or application: Both
Logging with syslog (Unix) or Event Log (Windows NT): No
CERN/NCSA common log format: Yes
Log files can be automatically cycled or archived: Yes
Normal (hit) log entries can be customized: Yes, with .dll programming.
Can write to multiple logs: Yes
Server can generate non-hit log entries (such as comments): No
CGI scripts can create their own log entries: No
Performance measurement logs: Yes
Can generate referrer log entries: Yes
Can generate browser log entries: Yes
Can track individual users in log: No

Protocol Support and Includes
Automatic response to If-Modified-Since: Yes
Select documents based on Accept header: No
Select documents based on User-Agent header: No
Includes based on HTML comments: Yes
Includes can be based on request headers: No
Server can force includes: No
Automatically include any HTTP headers in responses: No
Access to server state variables from CGI or other scripting: Yes
Has built-in scripting language: No
Has built-in image-map handling: Yes
Supports HTTP/1.1 PUT: Yes
Non-supported methods can invoke a script: No
Supports the Windows CGI interface: Yes
Comes with SNMP agent: No
Supports HTTP/1.1 byte ranges: Yes
Supports HTTP/1.1 persistent connections: Yes
Understands full URIs in HTTP/1.1 requests: Yes
Server&colon  

Security
Can require password (Authorization&colon user): Yes
Supports SSL v. 2: Yes
Supports SSL v. 3: No
Supports S-HTTP: Yes
Supports PCT: No
Prohibit by domain name: Yes
Prohibit by IP address: Yes
Configurable user groups (not just a single user list): Yes
Can change user access control list without restarting server: Yes
Can hide part of a document based on security rules: No
Security rules can be based on URLs: Yes
Default security model for file-based documents: Allow access to all files (no access file)
Hierarchical permissions for directory-based documents: Yes
Additional security features: No

Other Features
GUI-based setup: Yes
GUI-based maintenance: Yes
Remote maintenance: Yes
Real-time performance measurement tools: Yes
Script or action based on output media type: No
Also serves other TCP protocols: No
Automatic directory tree: Yes
User directories: No
Search engine: Built-in indexer and search engine
Has direct (non-CGI) link to a DBMS: No
Includes user interaction tools: No
Type of server-side imagemaps: Both
Allows non-blocking DNS: No
Has a support mailing list: Yes
Also acts as an HTTP proxy server: No
Proxy server also caches: Not applicable
Includes full source code for server: None available
Pricing: $499
Pricing (more info):  
Best features (as described by server author): The software's power and performance, its intuitive graphical user interface, the comprehensive information in the enclosed books, and the suite of included support applications.
URL for more information: http://software.ora.com/

3. Reviews

Although the product has a significant portion of the market share that is left after the major players, it is rarely referred to in reviews. The best source of comment was Usenet groups, but many of the documents indexed by searche engines were no longer at the site being referenced. Many of these referred to problems running WebSite Pro with NT4.0. Another thread was called "WebSite Pro - Pro or Con?", but the documents were no longer available. Down at hit number 72 of 539, (WebSite Talk Discussion by thread), I found discussions that were still available, but not particularly useful.

Most other references I found were more in the nature of announcements than feature comparisons and reviews, such as this one:

I found a security features comparison table which named all of the server products that supported each security feature that was listed.

4. Pros and Cons

Pro

Con

Last Modified: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 9:09 AM