From: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk>
Message-Id: <199601182310.XAA08507@cadair.elsevier.co.uk>
Subject: Re: dbm -> db
To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1996 23:10:11 +0000 (GMT)
In-Reply-To: <199601182256.AA033475774@ooo.lanl.gov> from "Rob Hartill" at Jan
 18, 96 03:56:13 pm
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In reply to Rob Hartill who said
> 
> The problem as I see it is that Apache is claiming to be doing
> DBM when (with BSD) it's actually doing DB. No big deal in general
> except that the wrong name is being used. This could be an issue if
> two servers (one BSD the other not) were sharing .htaccess files and
> they refer to DBM.. the result will be incompatibility. If the BSD
> stuff uses the correct name (via mod_auth_db) then this wouldn't be
> a problem.  [sharing DBM files looks impossible in this scenario]

This is even less of a problem than you think it is since dbm isn't
portable so it's simply not possible for two servers to share dbm code
across platforms. Anyone who sticks with dbm ensures that they can only
use it on that one platform. Those using db can share across various
platform. Whichever the case BSD will always work.

The BSD guys wouldn't have mapped the old interface into the new one
if the outcome would be problems such as you think might exist. It really
is totally transparent to the outside world that BSD is doing this.

Just forget about it and pretend that db and dbm on BSD are actually
different and that it just happens to support both for backward
compatibility (which is exactly what it's doing but it's doing it
by implementing dbm internally as db but since dbm is platform
specific anyway it's perfectly entitled to do this).

-- 
  Paul Richards. Originative Solutions Ltd.
  Internet: paul@netcraft.co.uk, http://www.netcraft.co.uk
  Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 1225 447500 (work)