Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hyperreal.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA16339; Thu, 10 Jul 1997 17:30:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from budgie.gui.com.au (root@budgie.gui.com.au [203.8.105.216]) by hyperreal.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA16325 for ; Thu, 10 Jul 1997 17:30:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mocking (mocking.gui.com.au [203.19.74.101]) by budgie.gui.com.au (8.7.3/8.6.9) with SMTP id KAA07850 for ; Fri, 11 Jul 1997 10:29:48 +1000 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970711112940.009fab50@www.spidereye.com.au> X-Sender: garyw@www.spidereye.com.au X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 11:29:40 +1100 To: new-httpd@apache.org From: Gary Wisniewski Subject: Re: ASP support in Apache In-Reply-To: References: <3.0.1.32.19970710190233.00a5bbc0@www.spidereye.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: new-httpd-owner@apache.org Precedence: bulk Reply-To: new-httpd@apache.org >But perhaps we can change this. If we can make both mod_perl and mod_php >perform well with Apache-NT and given that both have ODBC capabilities, it >might make ASP support rather redundant. To me, it is more important that >I can take a Unix web site and stick it on Apache-NT and have it work >unchanged. mod_perl won't help, since it's really just a faster way to write CGI scripts, and ASP takes people away from writing CGI and embeds the language within the HTML code. So, mod_php is a much closer comparison. But, mod_php (no offense, please), doesn't stand a chance against the Visual Basic Juggernaut, because VB is ubiquitous on the NT platform, and is embedded in every Office 97 product. Soon Windows itself will have it's own "csh equivalent" for administrative and control purposes based upon VB. So, end-users, developers, sysadmins (a growing community under NT) are all totally comfortable with ASP right now, and it will become totally entrenched. I don't think ASP needs to be in conflict with the notion of having Unix Web sites transportable transparently to NT. I think it's just fills-in the gaps and reduces the number of obstacles to Apache adoption under NT. mod_php, mod_perl, etc. should also work on both platforms, so Unix people can easily step into a world they know and love. But, trying to convince the current ASP users to try something else is pointless, I'm afraid. I'm not, by the way, arguing that ASP or VB are superior technologies. That's a different discussion. I just know the market. Hopefully, the presence of technologies like PHP/FI, perl, and otherwise will at least dilute some of the MS-entricity and give people more choices. Gary ------ p.s. For those unfamilar with ASP, here's a page which outputs ten lines in a ul list:

This is line number <%= Counter %> <% Next %>

Looks familiar, eh? ------------------------------ Gary Wisniewski Spider Eye Studios Pty. Ltd., Australia, +61 3 9415 6700 [Formerly GUI Online Productions]