Software Review: How May We Serve You?

Software Review: How May We Serve You?

by Scott Clark
With all the Web servers that are available, it's hard to know which one is the best for your task.
A few years ago (when Mosaic was still the leading browser), if you were looking for a Web server, your choices were mostly limited to servers that ran on Unix operating systems. There was the Apache server, the CERN server and the NCSA server-all free-that were (and still are) available for most Unix operating systems, but if you were running an OS other than Unix, you were stuck.
Now, dozens of servers are offered for numerous platforms, both for sale and free; Netscape is aggressively marketing servers for Windows NT; and Novell and Microsoft are giving their servers away free with their operating systems, Novell NetWare 4.11 and Windows NT 4.0. With all these choices, it's hard to know which server is right for you. In this review, Web Developer® looks at four Web servers of varying prices and capabilities. We'll let you know what they can and can't do, and exactly who they are targeted towards:

Microsoft's Internet Information Server 3.0
Novell's intranet Web Server 3.0
Netscape's Enterprise Server 2.01
Luckman's Web Commander Pro, beta 5
Although most people think of the Internet when they think of Web servers, a large proportion of Web servers are used for intranet purposes internally, within an organization. The same Web servers that serve pages to the Internet can also be used internally; but several companies are marketing Web servers specifically targeted towards the intranet market. Novell, with an estimated user base of more than 3 million Novell networks, is releasing their new NetWare Web Server 3.0 in the first quarter of '97, just as Microsoft releases its Internet Information Server. Both of these servers seem to have a lot going for them, and the price is definitely right, but what exactly do they offer?
On the other end of the price spectrum is Netscape's Enterprise Server. Netscape has been a leader in the server business since April of 1994. According to Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen, the founders of Netscape, their mission is "to be the premier provider of open software that enables people and companies to exchange information and conduct commerce over the Internet and other global networks." They've been building on that premise ever since.
Somewhere in the middle between the Enterprise Server and the two free servers is Luckman's Web Commander Pro. Most people are surprised (and a bit overwhelmed) by the rich features of this "byte-sized" Web server. Web Commander is offered in two versions, the basic Web Commander and the Professional version. Web Commander Pro delivers many of the rich features of top-end servers without the bloated price.
Novel Netware Web Server 3.0
Novell has been in the network business since 1983, and an estimated 55 million people log on to Novell networks around the world every day. Novell is the world's market leader in server operating environments (with a 52% market share). It stands to reason that they know what they're doing when it comes to internal networks, and they've designed their intranet NetWare Web Server with this knowledge firmly in mind. Some of the new features Novell claims for NetWare 4.11 Web Server 3.0 include:

Proxy caching allows delivery of cached HTML pages (4 to 10 times faster)
Double the performance of NetWare Web Server 2.5
up to a 60% reduction of WAN traffic
SSL 3.0 support
full support for Java applications
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) support
Virtual Private Networking Services that run over the Internet using encrypted tunneling
Filtering and IP network address translation at the packet level for systems not using the proxy cache or circuit gateway
RAS to provide dial-up and dial-out access to intranets
Novell QuickFinder Web site search engine
Advanced Routing Services allows both IPX and IP to be combined and secured.
As the NetWare Web Server is a part of NetWare 4.11, you automatically get the upgraded Web server if you upgrade after the first quarter of 1997.
To install the Web Server, you first load the install module (install.nlm), and select "Install NetWare WEB Server" from the list at the top of the screen. After the installation is started, you can simply specify a password for use when you administer the server, then accept the default file locations and let it do the rest...a pretty straightforward operation.
Printed documentation for the Web Server is virtually nonexistent, although Online Help is included with the Novell Web Server Administrator. This is not to say that NetWare 4.11 lacks documentation-it comes with a printed Installation Guide and an informative Guide to NetWare 4 Networks, as well as the online NetWare documentation. However, there's not much in the manuals about the Web Server itself; it's not even listed in either book's index. The readme file in the Web Server directory of the installation CD told me more about the Web server than anything else in the package. The latest features of the Web Server are provided in documentation on the installation CDs, as is the Dynamic Web Page Programmer's Guide, a Server Side Includes page and a directory with several CGI pages. A series of Quick Start cards are provided, one of which describes the NetWare Web Server.
From the Quick Start card I learned that to make changes later in the configuration, the Web Server Administrator is used (see Figure 1), which actually runs on a client machine connected to the server, not the server itself. Using the administrator, access can be granted or denied based on name or IP address, and client requests to the server can be logged in the access.log file. I found that the best documentation concerning the Web Server is accessed from within the Administrator program. Here's where you find out how to change the server password, create a virtual host or a virtual server, open the Key Database file and do virtually anything else the server does.
Although Novell used to ship InnerWeb Publisher with IntranetWare 4.11, the new version doesn't ship with any HTML editor. Novell says this is a feature that allows you to continue to use your favorite Web editor. As far as assisting developers with HTML, the included home page shows you several sample pages, quite a few Web images, information about image maps, and some BASIC and Perl scripts. The Novell Web Server also includes a document tree (which they expect you to follow) that places images, maps and scripts in subordinate directories under the main WEB directory. Virtual directories allow you to serve Web pages from any file server on the network, which means you don't have to install a separate Web server on each file server.
So where does that leave the Novell NetWare Web Server? Pretty good, if you're already using NetWare. I don't think that anyone's going to run out and buy a NetWare system just for the free Web Server, but Novell does has a very strong product that is a perfect choice if you're familiar with NetWare, and are looking for a good intranet server. Novell may want to come up with some decent Web server documentation, include at least an rudimentary HTML editor and throw in a few more Web utilities, just to make it an all-in-one package.
Microsoft Internet Information Server
Microsoft doesn't really need an introduction, and if you don't know who they are or what they've been doing, perhaps you're a relatively recent visitor to our planet. Microsoft has been positioning itself to look very attractive to the company looking for both intranet and Internet Web servers. If you're running Microsoft Windows NT 3.51, and you haven't upgraded to 4.0, Internet Information Server may be just the reason you've been waiting for. Windows NT-based Web servers have been pushing a few Unix-based Web servers into the cobwebs these days, as more and more companies are developing NT Web server compatible software.
By releasing IIS for free along with NT 4.0, Microsoft is causing a lot of Webmasters and IS professionals to ask themselves, "Why do I need to buy a Web server if I already have IIS?" They know Microsoft as a reputable company, and if they have problems, Microsoft's technical support base is strong, though a bit expensive (support for IIS isn't free). If you haven't checked out IIS since version 1.0, you're in for a big performance boost-40% faster, according to Microsoft. Internet Information Server is chock full of features:

Streaming media support with Microsoft NetShow
Seagate Software's Crystal Reports 4.5
SSL 3.0 Support for digital certificate authentication
ActiveX Data Object (ADO) & Active Server Pages
Microsoft Index Server 1.1 provides searching of HTML, ASP, NetShow, text, Word, Excel and PowerPoint(r) documents and properties in seven languages.
HTML editing software (FrontPage 97 is included)
Support for Microsoft FrontPage 97 Server Extensions
Internet Information Server 3.0 is included as one of the components of the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 2. IIS is also available from Microsoft's Web site and can be ordered (for free, no less!) on CD from the site. If you have installed the Service Pack 2, then you have already installed IIS 3.0.
Documentation for IIS 3.0 is limited to the online help. Considering all the features of IIS 3.0, it would behoove Microsoft to actually print a manual. This is not to say that the online docs are not comprehensive-but I still prefer printed documentation for something this large.
To modify any of the Internet services (IIS, FTP, NetShow, etc.) after the initial setup, a single administration tool, the Internet Service Manager, is used. The Internet Service Manager (see Figure 2) also allows you to monitor the status of all of your servers on all machines at the same time. You can also remotely administer any of your servers using any standard Web browser.
If you haven't tried FrontPage 97, which comes with IIS 3.0 and is also available separately from the Microsoft Web site, then you owe it to yourself to at least try it out. I still prefer to code manually, but FrontPage 97 includes the ability to create complex CGI-type applications using FrontPage extensions, design imagemaps, automatically convert images into JPGs or GIFs, and create home pages and entire Web sites. If you use other Microsoft products such as Word, Access or Excel, you can export from those programs directly to HTML, and using FrontPage 97, integrate them into your own Web site. Suffice it to say that if I was going to use a graphical HTML editor, FrontPage is definitely the one I'd choose.
One of the slickest new features of IIS 3.0 is NetShow, Microsoft's streaming media server. NetShow could be the answer to the question that Joe Public has been asking for a while now-namely, "Where're the videos, cartoons, sports, music, games and movies that I'm used to seeing on TV?" Streaming audio and video, especially presented live, could bootstrap public acceptance of the Internet as more than just a passing fad.
Microsoft is using two technologies to accomplish this: multicasting-the ability of a server to simultaneously send the same data to multiple IPs at the same time, and streaming-which allows a user to see or hear the multimedia content as it is being downloaded, rather than having to wait until the whole thing is downloaded. Multicasting is important because server loads are immensely reduced even with high numbers of concurrent users. And streaming is the only effective multimedia technique for today's non-technical audience, as they want their multimedia, but they want it NOW!
Crystal Reports 4.5 is included with IIS 3.0, along with six pre-formatted Web server activity log reports. Reports can be customized and printed, naturally, but they can also be published directly to the Web, where they can be viewed with any browser. IIS server activity logs can be formatted and used accordingly, and reports can be generated on the fly through the Web via the browser. Using the Crystal Reports Engine, developers can add presentation quality reporting capabilities to Web server applications with very little coding.
Index Server is a very useful tool that comes with the new IIS 3.0. Designed to index all of the text and properties of the pages served by IIS, the Index Server lets users search the contents of all of your pages (HTML, text and Microsoft Office documents) using any forms-capable Web browser. The results are displayed as a standard, fully configurable HTML page.
Index Server is designed to be a low maintenance tool. Whenever any documents on Web virtual roots (on Windows NT Server with NTFS, of course) are changed, edited, or deleted, the index is updated automatically. One of the great benefits of using Microsoft's IIS 3.0 is that Web pages can be served from any file server accessible to Windows NT Server, including Novell NetWare and Unix. The Index Server can still index these files, but the update is not automatic and has to be scheduled.
Microsoft is really pushing the envelope with the IIS 3.0 package. It includes tools to create your Web site using the latest ActiveX technology, and using FrontPage extensions you can put your database online, create shopping carts, guest books, and more. Microsoft NetShow provides content providers with a means to display multimedia presentations on the Web using streaming technology, and Crystal Reports takes logging reports a step further than they've ever been. On the down side, there's no proxy server included (it's a whopping $995 extra), and you're limited to using Microsoft's operating system.
Luckman's Web Commander Pro
Before you brush Luckman's Web Commander Pro aside as just another personal Web server, you'd better look at the rich features and price. At $495 for the Professional version (available 1Q97) and $99 for the basic version (which still has a lot of the same features), Web Commander Pro has features that many ultra-expensive Web servers only have as expensive options. While the basic version of Web Commander was designed for individuals and small- to medium-sized businesses that want to create a Web presence for themselves or their companies, Web Commander Pro is capable of drawing the attention of larger corporations with its rich features. With Web Commander Pro, you get:

ODBC connectivity
Java applet creation environment (via Jamba LE)
Secure Server-SHTTP, SSL, and RSA encryption
Sun's Java Development Kit
Perl support
Wizard-driven domain registration
Search engines: Excite for Windows NT, WAIS for Win95
Microsoft Internet Explorer and Enhanced Mosaic browsers
SMTP mail server
Automated credit card verification
WYSIWYG HTML editor (WebStudio)
Wizard driven Web page creation
Image Map Editor (WebMap)
Streaming audio and video with StreamWorks
Multi-Domain Server
Real Time Monitoring
Web Commander Pro is available for both Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT, so I opted for the former for a little OS variety. The only real difference between the two is that the NT version can run as a service, whereas the Windows 95 version starts when you launch the Web Commander program. Installation was a snap, as basically all you do is place the self-starting CD into your machine and sit back. Well, you do have to answer the simple questions that the installation Wizard asks, such as where you'd like Web Commander to reside, and which directory you want to be your web root directory. Web Commander Pro took about 50 MB for the full installation, which included two browsers, the WebMap, Web Charge, Jamba LE and WebStudio software, as well as the Web and Mail servers and help system.
Documentation is extensive with Web Commander Pro...the best in this review actually. Not only do you get extensive online help and Adobe PDF files that cover everything from installation to multiple domains, but you get it all in print (yes, actual paper) in a 400+ page User's Manual. And all this documentation is for a product that is so intuitive that it could get by with extremely minimal help anyway. Personally, I'm glad to have it available, even if I don't need it.
The User's Guide has some handy features such as an excellent section on Server Side Includes (SSI), the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and the Information Server Application Program Interface (ISAPI). The appendix also includes some excellent examples of CGI and Perl scripts including a bulletin board, questionnaire and a guest book as well as several other useful scripts.
I set up a test site using a local version of the Web Developer® Online site that I have on my machine: in less than 5 minutes' time the site was operational. It doesn't get much easier than that! Logging is quite extensive, and includes information such as the referring document, client's browser, files sent and received, errors, hits, etc. and can be cycled daily, weekly, monthly or never.
To change the root directory, I selected the server from the Servers List and clicked the Properties button. This brought up a tabbed administration window (see Figure 3) that allowed me to change many basic server settings, including:

document root
Webmaster's email address (to be used in footers)
IP address
port (you may have many servers on different ports)
security (you can allow or deny access based on domain, IP, name or group)
headers and footers
the type of index file you wish to use (i.e. .html, .htm, .shtml, etc.)
styles to be applied
MIME types
Virtual Paths
From the main Web Commander window, you can click the tree button (or go to the Tools menu and select Show Tree) and view the Web Tree (a tree-structured style look at the entire Web site), showing all the HTML files. These can be further expanded to show all the graphics and files within each document. The documents themselves can be viewed in the browser by right clicking the item, or by clicking on "Tree Tools" from the Tools menu. They can also be viewed in WebStudio in the same manner. WebStudio is the (somewhat) WYSIWYG word processor style HTML editor that is included with Web Commander. While it does allow for basic HTML creation, it is still lacking in functionality: you can't view and edit the actual source code while you work on it in WebStudio.
Web Commander makes it extremely easy to set up a working Web site by including wizards for just about everything, including a Style Wizard, a DNS Wizard (for new domain names), and a Web Page Wizard (totally separate from WebStudio) which allows you to create corporate, personal, order form, feedback, database and generic home pages. The Wizards allow new developers to jump right in and set up their Web site without even getting their feet wet.
Web Commander also includes several other utilities. The WebMap tool allows developers to create detailed image maps for their pages. Excite for Web Servers and Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) enables the developer to make their site searchable, which, if you have a large site, can increase the site's usability by a very large degree.
Much like Microsoft's NetShow, Luckman is including the StreamWorks Server, encoder and player with Web Commander Pro. This allows the developer to deliver real-time video and audio over the Web, but does require viewers to download and use the free StreamWorks player to be used in conjunction with their browser.
Web Commander's credit card transaction application, WebCharge, works by dialing out on a separate modem for authorization, using any of the four listed clearing houses (NaBANCO, MDI, VISA & TDSI). If you are in a hurry to get your company on the Web using credit card verification, WebCharge may be just the ticket you've been looking for, and it's just one piece of Web Commander's rich pie.
Is Web Commander Pro worth the money? You bet-the Web server alone is worth the money-but the included utilities and tools make Web Commander just the tool for the small- to medium-sized business or corporation. Should you stop using Microsoft IIS or Netscape Enterprise server and start using Web Commander? You'd be foolish to stop using what's already working for you-but you'd also be a fool if you don't seriously look at your needs and consider Web Commander Pro. It may be able to solve many of your Web development problems at once
Netscape Enterprise Server
Again, if you don't know who Netscape is, you must be sitting in a doctor's office-albeit a really cool doctor-and you just happened to pick this magazine up. Hope you feel better soon. The rest of us know that Netscape has already made a fortune selling their server products. They have been a driving force behind the astounding growth of the World Wide Web, and are among the pioneers of HTML's development. Their Enterprise Server has long been a standard Web server for many a corporate Web site. Enterprise Server 2.01 includes:

WYSIWYG HTML editing (with Netscape Gold)
Server-side Java and JavaScript application support
SSL 3.0, client-side certificates, and advanced access control
Support for secure, remote, cross-platform administration, SNMP, and reporting
Workgroup Version Control of HTML files and applications (uses the MKS Integrity Engine)
Web site management with Site manager
Web site search engine
Multiprocessor support
Informix, Oracle, Sybase and ODBC database connectivity
LiveWire Application Development System
Enterprise Server is available for Digital Unix 3.2C, HP-UX 9.+, AIX 3.2.5+, IRIX 5.3+, Solaris 2.4+ and Microsoft Windows NT 3.51+(Alpha and Intel). We tested the NT (Intel) flavor of Enterprise Server.
Like everyone else these days, Netscape is trying to make sure that when you buy a Netscape server, it's a one-stop deal. Enterprise Server is a complete package. It comes with its own HTML editor, Netscape Gold, Netscape LiveWire Client/Server Application Development environment-which itself contains a site management program (poetically called Site Manager), as well as the server itself.
Enterprise Server is installed from two CDs, one for the server and one for LiveWire. The installation is a smooth process, and you merely have to fill in the blanks or accept the defaults. The full installation took about 45 MB, including the room for log files. Documentation is extensive, including an Enterprise Server Administrator's Guide, Programmer's Guide, Navigator Gold Authoring Guide, Netscape LiveWire Developer's Guide, and Netscape JavaScript Guide. Online documentation is equally thorough, with just about every function in the administration interface having online help.
Administration of the Enterprise Server is done through the Netscape browser interface (see Figure 4), so the server can be administered remotely through any frames-capable browser. Enterprise Server is feature-rich, and the administration browser GUI makes aneasy job of it.
The System Settings section is where you control the Network settings, determine the error responses, tune the performance, view the server settings, or restore the configuration to those of a previous day. In the Access Control section you can control access by User or Group, IP or domain. New Users or Groups can be added or edited from within the admin browser by simply filling in a few fields and clicking a button.
Much the same way, Server Certificates can be requested and installed in the Encryption section. A Certificate request is generated and emailed to the Certificate authority of your choice.
In the Programs section, ShellCGI and WinCGI directories can be easily added, and CGI file types can be specified to be whichever extension you wish to use (i.e. .cgi or .pl). LiveWire can be activated and the LiveWire Application Manager can be set up to require a password. The Java interpreter can also be turned on and a specific directory assigned for Java applets.
Server status can be monitored by clicking on the Server Status button, and the last 25 accesses are always shown. The access log and error log are but a click away, and a report can be instantly generated in plain text or HTML.
Stylin'
Styles can be created that specify CGI file type, footer, error responses, log preferences, remote file manipulation, access restriction and server-parsed HTML, among other things. These styles can be applied to specific directories, which can come in very handy for ISPs hosting many different domain names.
The Content Management section lets you set up the primary document directory, add additional document directories (such as www.myserver.com/additdir), add both software and hardware virtual servers, control URL forwarding, set up document preferences (such as index filenames, i.e. index.htm or index.html), create document footers to go on the bottom of Web pages, and control HTML parsing on a Style by Style basis.
Microsoft is not alone in providing a means for viewers to search the Web site. The Index Documents section of the Enterprise administration GUI provides a mechanism to index specific directories, and hence, Web sites on the server.
The Auto Catalog feature of Enterprise Server is convenient for large sites that have many pages. What it does is to create a catalog of your site-all the pages that it contains, based on the title, classification, author and last modified date. Then it generates an HTML page that people can access which allows them to easily find exactly what they are looking for. The cataloging of your site can be scheduled to take place at times of low usage, or it can be done manually.
The LiveWire Application development environment is a program worth an entire review on its own. However, since we don't have the space right here, suffice it to say that LiveWire is a very full-featured program that enables you to develop client/server applications for the Web using JavaScript, HTML and the LiveScript compiler, which generates dynamic HTML on the fly.
Several applications are included with LiveWire as part of the AppFoundry, which highlights Web applications created and used by businesses around the globe. LiveWire comes with online documentation, as well as a printed LiveWire Developer's Guide that you'll probably find yourself reading from front to back. A full debugger is included, using the Netscape browser (surprise!) and a separate debugging window.
Although LiveWire requires a thorough knowledge of both HTML and JavaScript to create applications, it does give you the potential to create some absolutely mind-blowing applications. Also part of LiveWire is a Web site management program called Site Manager. Site Manager itself includes HTML templates and wizards, automatic updating of links, pages or files when changes are made within the site, a graphical map of the site, Secure Web site deployment, and URL and link checking.
Netscape Gold is probably a familiar sight to many of you. I've generally found two kinds of Gold users-those that love it and those that hate it. I generally fall into the latter category, but as I've said, I just prefer to code the old fashioned way-using Notepad. That does not, however, take away from the fact that Netscape has come out with an HTML editor that gives developers the ability to upload their completed HTML files up to the Web server to test them live. And of course, it'll let you use the latest Netscapisms without giving you any grief. Using Gold with LiveWire and Enterprise Server can save the developer a lot of time and effort in the long run.
Although it's hard to find many faults with Enterprise Server, the one problem I have is also applicable for Netscape's lower-end server, FastTrack. The caching of Web pages greatly speeds up Web page access time, but the server cache cannot be flushed without stopping and restarting the whole server. Netscape has not offered a solution, other than to disable the cache.
Enterprise can be the backbone of your intranet or Internet Web site, and you can rest assured that it'll continue to be an industry standard. Given the features of Enterprise Server, it's easy to see why Microsoft is working extra hard to leverage the Web server market away from Netscape. Netscape Enterprise 3.0, available 1Q97, promises to be even better. Enterprise 3.0 will include the same features as 2.01, as well as several new features including Intelligent Agents-pushing technology-pages that automatically notify users when they are updated, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)-which allows the server to control access and provide a single logon across all intranet resources, and Netscape ONE (Open Network Environment) support.
surprise! they're All Good
Web servers are a lot like operating systems...everyone has their own opinion as to which is best. So which of these Web servers do I think is the best? If you've never set up a server or designed a Web page, and you intend to put your company on the Web yourself (perhaps with a leased 56K line, a Pentium and some software)-and if you're looking for a package that does it all-then Web Commander Pro is exactly what you're looking for. If, on the other hand, your company is looking for a server that can handle 1,000,000 hits a day, and they also want a complete package of utilities, and they're running IRIX 5.3, then Netscape's Enterprise Server will fill their needs quite well.
What of Microsoft and Novell? Microsoft has a very strong product that's hard to touch if you're running Windows NT. IIS 3.0 is chock full of new features, and of the WYSIWYG type HTML editors, FrontPage (the IIS HTML editor) is among the very best. Novell is now starting to integrate more and more into their IntranetWare package, making it a natural choice for those already running a NetWare operating system. All of the servers in this review are rugged, dependable servers, as testified by scores of users worldwide, and will serve you well on the Web.

Scott Clark (sclark@webdeveloper.com) is Technical Editor for Web Developer®. He is based in Kissimmee, Florida, and when he's offline (which isn't often), you'll find him digging in the dirt, working with his tropical plants.

Reprinted from Web Developer® magazine, Vol. 3 No.2 Mar/Apr 1997 (c) 1997 internet.com Corporation. All rights reserved.
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