home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
- <!DOCTYPE manualpage SYSTEM "./style/manualpage.dtd">
- <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="./style/manual.en.xsl"?>
- <manualpage metafile="new_features_2_0.xml.meta">
-
- <title>Overview of new features in Apache 2.0</title>
-
- <summary>
- <p>This document describes some of the major changes between the
- 1.3 and 2.0 versions of the Apache HTTP Server.</p>
- </summary>
-
- <seealso><a href="upgrading.html">Upgrading to 2.0 from 1.3</a></seealso>
-
- <section id="core">
- <title>Core Enhancements</title>
-
- <dl>
- <dt>Unix Threading</dt>
-
- <dd>On Unix systems with POSIX threads support, Apache can
- now run in a hybrid multiprocess, multithreaded mode. This
- improves scalability for many, but not all configurations.</dd>
-
- <dt>New Build System</dt>
-
- <dd>The build system has been rewritten from scratch to be
- based on <code>autoconf</code> and <code>libtool</code>.
- This makes Apache's configuration system more similar to
- that of other packages.</dd>
-
- <dt>Multiprotocol Support</dt>
-
- <dd>Apache now has some of the infrastructure in place to
- support serving multiple protocols. <module>mod_echo</module> has
- been written as an example.</dd>
-
- <dt>Better support for non-Unix
- platforms</dt>
-
- <dd>Apache 2.0 is faster and more stable on non-Unix
- platforms such as BeOS, OS/2, and Windows. With the
- introduction of platform-specific <a
- href="mpm.html">multi-processing modules</a> (MPMs) and the
- Apache Portable Runtime (APR), these platforms are now
- implemented in their native API, avoiding the often buggy and
- poorly performing POSIX-emulation layers.</dd>
-
- <dt>New Apache API</dt>
-
- <dd>The API for modules has changed significantly for 2.0.
- Many of the module-ordering/-priority problems from 1.3 should
- be gone. 2.0 does much of this automatically, and module ordering
- is now done per-hook to allow more flexibility. Also, new calls
- have been added that provide additional module capabilities
- without patching the core Apache server.</dd>
-
- <dt>IPv6 Support</dt>
-
- <dd>On systems where IPv6 is supported by the underlying
- Apache Portable Runtime library, Apache gets IPv6 listening
- sockets by default. Additionally, the <directive
- module="mpm_common">Listen</directive>, <directive module="core"
- >NameVirtualHost</directive>, and <directive module="core"
- >VirtualHost</directive> directives support
- IPv6 numeric address strings (e.g., "<code>Listen
- [fe80::1]:8080</code>").</dd>
-
- <dt>Filtering</dt>
-
- <dd>Apache modules may now be written as filters which act on
- the stream of content as it is delivered to or from the
- server. This allows, for example, the output of CGI scripts to
- be parsed for Server Side Include directives using the
- <code>INCLUDES</code> filter in <module>mod_include</module>. The
- module <module>mod_ext_filter</module> allows external programs to
- act as filters in much the same way that CGI programs can act as
- handlers.</dd>
-
- <dt>Multilanguage Error Responses</dt>
-
- <dd>Error response messages to the browser are now provided in
- several languages, using SSI documents. They may be customized
- by the administrator to achieve a consistent look and feel.</dd>
-
- <dt>Simplified configuration</dt>
-
- <dd>Many confusing directives have been simplified. The often
- confusing <code>Port</code> and <code>BindAddress</code> directives
- are gone; only the <directive module="mpm_common">Listen</directive>
- directive is used for IP address binding; the <directive
- module="core">ServerName</directive> directive specifies the
- server name and port number only for redirection and vhost
- recognition.</dd>
-
- <dt>Native Windows NT Unicode Support</dt>
-
- <dd>Apache 2.0 on Windows NT now uses utf-8 for all filename
- encodings. These directly translate to the underlying Unicode
- file system, providing multilanguage support for all Windows
- NT-based installations, including Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
- <em>This support does not extend to Windows 95, 98 or ME, which
- continue to use the machine's local codepage for filesystem
- access.</em></dd>
-
- <dt>Regular Expression Library Updated</dt>
-
- <dd>Apache 2.0 includes the <a href="http://www.pcre.org/">Perl
- Compatible Regular Expression Library</a> (PCRE). All regular
- expression evaluation now uses the more powerful Perl 5
- syntax.</dd>
-
- </dl>
- </section>
-
- <section id="module">
- <title>Module Enhancements</title>
-
- <dl>
- <dt><module>mod_ssl</module></dt>
-
- <dd>New module in Apache 2.0. This module is an interface
- to the SSL/TLS encryption protocols provided by
- OpenSSL.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_dav</module></dt>
-
- <dd>New module in Apache 2.0. This module implements the HTTP
- Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) specification for
- posting and maintaining web content.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_deflate</module></dt>
-
- <dd>New module in Apache 2.0. This module allows supporting
- browsers to request that content be compressed before delivery,
- saving network bandwidth.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_auth_ldap</module></dt>
-
- <dd>New module in Apache 2.0.41. This module allows an LDAP
- database to be used to store credentials for HTTP Basic
- Authentication. A companion module, <module>mod_ldap</module>
- provides connection pooling and results caching.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_auth_digest</module></dt>
-
- <dd>Includes additional support for session caching across
- processes using shared memory.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_charset_lite</module></dt>
-
- <dd>New module in Apache 2.0. This experimental module allows
- for character set translation or recoding.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_file_cache</module></dt>
-
- <dd>New module in Apache 2.0. This module includes the
- functionality of <code>mod_mmap_static</code> in Apache 1.3,
- plus adds further caching abilities.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_headers</module></dt>
-
- <dd>This module is much more flexible in Apache 2.0. It can now
- modify request headers used by <module>mod_proxy</module>, and
- it can conditionally set response headers.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_proxy</module></dt>
-
- <dd>The proxy module has been completely rewritten to take
- advantage of the new filter infrastructure and to implement a
- more reliable, HTTP/1.1 compliant proxy. In addition, new
- <directive module="mod_proxy" type="section">Proxy</directive>
- configuration sections provide more readable (and internally
- faster) control of proxied sites; overloaded <code><Directory
- "proxy:..."></code> configuration are not supported. The module
- is now divided into specific protocol support modules including
- <code>proxy_connect</code>, <code>proxy_ftp</code> and
- <code>proxy_http</code>.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_negotiation</module></dt>
-
- <dd>A new <directive module="mod_negotiation"
- >ForceLanguagePriority</directive> directive can be used to assure that
- the client receives a single document in all cases, rather than
- NOT ACCEPTABLE or MULTIPLE CHOICES responses. In addition, the
- negotiation and MultiViews algorithms have been cleaned up to
- provide more consistent results and a new form of type map that
- can include document content is provided.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_autoindex</module></dt>
-
- <dd>Autoindex'ed directory listings can now be configured to
- use HTML tables for cleaner formatting, and allow finer-grained
- control of sorting, including version-sorting, and wildcard
- filtering of the directory listing.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_include</module></dt>
-
- <dd>New directives allow the default start and end tags for SSI elements
- to be changed and allow for error and time format configuration
- to take place in the main configuration file rather than in the
- SSI document. Results from regular expression parsing and grouping
- (now based on Perl's regular expression syntax) can be retrieved
- using <module>mod_include</module>'s variables <code>$0</code>
- .. <code>$9</code>.</dd>
-
- <dt><module>mod_auth_dbm</module></dt>
-
- <dd>Now supports multiple types of DBM-like databases using the
- <directive module="mod_auth_dbm">AuthDBMType</directive>
- directive.</dd>
-
- </dl>
- </section>
- </manualpage>
-