ASP?

[techies stpauls <te...@mecgrid.org.uk>]

I am a newby to the whole apache thing. Managed to get it working and serving
webpages at home using apache 2 ?(Win32) and no-ip.com, my friend asked me if
it did asp, and sent me a date of birth asp webpage, I stuck it in the httpdocs
folder and it kinda works, but my question is do I need configure and install
modperl on the machine to make it work right or should it work automaticlly, Sam


Sam Deakin and Andrew Nix
St Paul's Catholic High School
Firbank Road
Newall Green
Wythenshawe
Manchester
M23 2YS

tel: 0161 4375841, ext. 168
fax: 0161 4982030
tech4766@mecgrid.org.uk

Re: ASP?

[Alfred Vahau <al...@upng.ac.pg>]

I didn't have an email address to report them to and I certainly never 
saw the MS programmers responsable on any mailing list as I do with perl 
- I got a response within an hour when reporting a bug in HTML::Template.

Herein lies the strength of perl and perl-based solutions on IT 
Projects. Over a million Perl programmers who follow the sun. While half 
of the world sleeps, the other half is working, a guarantee that any 
posting will not go unnoticed. Then there is the collected wisdom of 
Perl - CPAN. Is there anything like this which is free?

Perl is likened to playing a little bit of heaven on earth. Giving 
freely after receiving from the community. I called for truce sometime 
ago on this list on Perl vs. PHP bashing and I am not about to go ASP or 
MS bashing.

 From a modperl/perl advocate from the other side of the globe.

Alfred Vahau
IT Services
Uni. PNG
Ph. 675 3267 277
Fax. 675 3267 187
Email: Alf.Vahau@upng.ac.pg


Aaron Trevena wrote:

> Perrin Harkins wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2003-04-29 at 08:10, Tom Gazzini wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> However, I need to get this e-commerce site up and running as soon as
>>> possible. I have spent some time trying to get an Apache/mod_perl site
>>> up and running, and I have been running all sorts of problems just
>>> getting the system up and running. Getting a system up and running is,
>>> of course, not usually a problem with MS tools.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> This is largely because of the one-size-fits-all approach of MS 
>> tools. That's fine for many people until they need to do something MS 
>> didn't
>> plan for, and then they have trouble.
>>
> After working with MS tools for ecommerce and content management I 
> think it is safe to say they make easy things easier and hard things 
> harder.
>
> This is good if you are following easy microsoft recipes and writing 
> hello world web pages, but pretty soon when developing real world 
> applications you will find that you spend most of your time working on 
> hard stuff that the easy stuff being easier has saved you very very 
> little time.
>
> This where mailing lists, irc, faqs, modules, face to face meetings 
> with other perl developers and sheer power of your language become 
> important. Things like multiple inheritance, version control, 
> namespaces, modules, templating and MVC engines become important. 
> Being able to benchmark and test code quickly and easily and output 
> debug to logs that you can tail or grep become important.
>
>> May I encourage you to keep trying?  I think you'll find that the
>> flexible programming environment and the wealth of free code on CPAN
>> make it worthwhile.
>>
> Indeed, that and articles from perl.com and the topics on the monger 
> mailing lists.  The whole time I used ASP not once did I find a nice 
> mailing list for help, or irc channels with any experts on - or even 
> any decent books on doing it well - there is only one decent ASP book, 
> Designing ASP by Oreilly, and that is fairly limited in its scope. 
> Compare it books like the mod_perl cookbook or the eagle. I never 
> found a bug fix for any of the nasty bugs in ASP/ADO - I didn't have 
> an email address to report them to and I certainly never saw the MS 
> programmers responsable on any mailing list as I do with perl - I got 
> a response within an hour when reporting a bug in HTML::Template.
>
> regards,
>
> A.
>
>

Re: ASP?

[Aaron Trevena <aa...@tuskerdirect.com>]

Perrin Harkins wrote:

>On Tue, 2003-04-29 at 08:10, Tom Gazzini wrote:
>  
>
>>However, I need to get this e-commerce site up and running as soon as
>>possible. I have spent some time trying to get an Apache/mod_perl site
>>up and running, and I have been running all sorts of problems just
>>getting the system up and running. Getting a system up and running is,
>>of course, not usually a problem with MS tools.
>>    
>>
>
>This is largely because of the one-size-fits-all approach of MS tools. 
>That's fine for many people until they need to do something MS didn't
>plan for, and then they have trouble.
>
After working with MS tools for ecommerce and content management I think 
it is safe to say they make easy things easier and hard things harder.

This is good if you are following easy microsoft recipes and writing 
hello world web pages, but pretty soon when developing real world 
applications you will find that you spend most of your time working on 
hard stuff that the easy stuff being easier has saved you very very 
little time.

This where mailing lists, irc, faqs, modules, face to face meetings with 
other perl developers and sheer power of your language become important. 
Things like multiple inheritance, version control, namespaces, modules, 
templating and MVC engines become important. Being able to benchmark and 
test code quickly and easily and output debug to logs that you can tail 
or grep become important.

>May I encourage you to keep trying?  I think you'll find that the
>flexible programming environment and the wealth of free code on CPAN
>make it worthwhile.
>
Indeed, that and articles from perl.com and the topics on the monger 
mailing lists.  The whole time I used ASP not once did I find a nice 
mailing list for help, or irc channels with any experts on - or even any 
decent books on doing it well - there is only one decent ASP book, 
Designing ASP by Oreilly, and that is fairly limited in its scope. 
Compare it books like the mod_perl cookbook or the eagle. I never found 
a bug fix for any of the nasty bugs in ASP/ADO - I didn't have an email 
address to report them to and I certainly never saw the MS programmers 
responsable on any mailing list as I do with perl - I got a response 
within an hour when reporting a bug in HTML::Template.

regards,

A.

RE: ASP?

[Perrin Harkins <pe...@elem.com>]

On Tue, 2003-04-29 at 08:10, Tom Gazzini wrote:
> However, I need to get this e-commerce site up and running as soon as
> possible. I have spent some time trying to get an Apache/mod_perl site
> up and running, and I have been running all sorts of problems just
> getting the system up and running. Getting a system up and running is,
> of course, not usually a problem with MS tools.

This is largely because of the one-size-fits-all approach of MS tools. 
That's fine for many people until they need to do something MS didn't
plan for, and then they have trouble.

May I encourage you to keep trying?  I think you'll find that the
flexible programming environment and the wealth of free code on CPAN
make it worthwhile.

- Perrin

Re: ASP?

[Aaron Trevena <aa...@tuskerdirect.com>]

Tom Gazzini wrote:

>Hi. I read your post with interest. I am just about to start on a web
>project and this is one of the questions I'm looking into. I am a long
>time C/C++ programmer with some ASP experience and also some Perl
>experience. Needless to say, I prefer Perl in terms of aesthetics and
>functionality (ie., coolness).
>
I prefer perl because I can get my job and personal projects done 
quicker and better with perl. 99% of the time ItJustWorks(TM).
In fact I, and may others make a living delivering major projects on 
time and on budget with perl and apache.

>However, I need to get this e-commerce site up and running as soon as
>possible. I have spent some time trying to get an Apache/mod_perl site
>up and running, and I have been running all sorts of problems just
>getting the system up and running. Getting a system up and running is,
>of course, not usually a problem with MS tools.
>
Really? I would hate to have to manage a windows system stuck in 
telehouse - what about all those virus, hardware changes, and hackers? 
What about backing it up and recovering it quickly, or applying version 
control to important configuration - can you roll back your last n 
changes to a single system configuration - can you automatically add new 
domains and or subsites to your webserver with a shell / perl script ?

If you are using Linux or pretty much any UNIX or BSD then setting up 
Apache 1.3.x and mod_perl and mod_ssl is a doddle - just follow the 
instructions on the site or in the documentation - how is this hard?

>My question to you is: why exactly do you prefer mod_perl over ASP (or
>ASP.NET) ?  What exactly can you do with mod_perl that you can't with
>ASP? On many forums I hear people making the claim that Apache/Perl is
>better than either ASP or PHP, but rarely is that followed up by
>concrete examples as to why.
>
I prefer it because it fits with how my brain works - practical problem 
solving. ASP and ASP.NET are two entirely different things, one is a 
poor-mans php, the other a poor-mans j2ee.

ASP is simply not suitable for any major development - that doesn't mean 
people don't use it - they do and its not nice. It lacks variable 
scoping, object orientation, security and core system functions like 
mail, file uploads, etc. There are no standard free libraries and it is 
impossible to implement good design or decent coding standards, it does 
not seperate presentation from application logic and has many many nasty 
quirks and bugs.

ASP.net is mostly vapour - in real life you get c# (or c# with a 
slightly different syntax) and a few more libraries than J2EE, some bits 
of C# are nicer than the equivilent in Java others are not. It is 
basicly Java for Microsofties, but lacks a developer community or 
thorough testing or proof of concept - At least java is proven and the 
skills are available.

It is hard to compare Perl and ASP and PHP - Perl is a general purpose 
language ; ASP is not a language it is a slightly differently broken CGI 
implementation somewhere between ISAPI and CGI with lots of both missing 
; PHP is closer to Cold Fusion in that it is a language embedded in HTML 
(although it now has a standalone compiler).

PHP requires modules to be compiled in and lacks database abstraction, 
is riddled with security wholes and doesn't have the elegance, power or 
features of Perl. Its debugging and error catching are inferior it does 
not support pragmas adequately and over-uses global variables, lacks 
decent namespaces and modules/components.

ASP.net is similar to J2EE it is a staticly typed language based on c# 
and a few c# libraries. It doesn't offer any great new features. It 
certainly isn't the advance in technology that Java was when it was 
released and will only really have an impact or benefit on microsoft 
places that won't touch anything else and have been stuck with ASP for 
ages and will still have to do a lot of work to migrate. It is also tied 
into the new windows tools and operating system so if windows doesn't 
have what you need (often the case) then you are stuck.

Perl offers a choice of templating systems (or ways to embed code or 
presentation logic in your html), database abstraction, a very flexible 
and mature object framework with multiple inheritance, pragmas to 
enforce programming rules, modules, namespaces, closures, CPAN, 
integration with Apache via mod_perl (which in itself offers many 
features still unavailable with IIS / ASP.net), choice of modules 
applying design patterns, several application servers and frameworks, a 
choice of object persistance methodogies and the best support community 
in the industry.

Perl is proven to be very fast for prototyping, has several great tools 
and frameworks for testing and documenting, it is also faster at most 
parsing and processing tasks than Java and other languages. The list of 
reasons to use perl would eat up a whole book. It works and many of us 
love it.

Try googling for the perl advocacy list or try downloading a few content 
management systems or ecommerce systems already out there - there are 
also plenty of modules, books and articles that will let you get the job 
done very fast.

Hope that helps.

A.

RE: ASP?

[Tom Gazzini <to...@barzakh.co.uk>]

Aaron,

Hi. I read your post with interest. I am just about to start on a web
project and this is one of the questions I'm looking into. I am a long
time C/C++ programmer with some ASP experience and also some Perl
experience. Needless to say, I prefer Perl in terms of aesthetics and
functionality (ie., coolness).

However, I need to get this e-commerce site up and running as soon as
possible. I have spent some time trying to get an Apache/mod_perl site
up and running, and I have been running all sorts of problems just
getting the system up and running. Getting a system up and running is,
of course, not usually a problem with MS tools.

My question to you is: why exactly do you prefer mod_perl over ASP (or
ASP.NET) ?  What exactly can you do with mod_perl that you can't with
ASP? On many forums I hear people making the claim that Apache/Perl is
better than either ASP or PHP, but rarely is that followed up by
concrete examples as to why.

Thanks,
Tom Gazzini
(Looking for reasons to justify using Perl, though it may take twice as
longer to get a site up and running that with ASP... Or will it?)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Trevena [mailto:aaron.trevena@tuskerdirect.com] 
> Sent: 29 April 2003 12:59
> To: modperl@perl.apache.org
> Subject: Re: ASP?
> 
> 
> techies stpauls wrote:
> 
> >I am a newby to the whole apache thing. Managed to get it 
> working and 
> >serving webpages at home using apache 2 ?(Win32) and no-ip.com, my 
> >friend asked me if it did asp, and sent me a date of birth 
> asp webpage, 
> >I stuck it in the httpdocs folder and it kinda works, but my 
> question 
> >is do I need configure and install modperl on the machine to make it 
> >work right or should it work automaticlly, Sam
> >
> 
> You can use the Apache::ASP perl module ( google or 
www.perldoc.com or 
www.cpan.org for details) - there is also a vbscript apache module on 
the internet somewhere but I cannot remember off the top of my head - 
but this requires the ASP code be written in PerlScript while most ASP 
is written in vbscript (an even more crippled version of visual basic).

Apache does not natively support ASP, you can do everything ASP does and

better with apache and any programming language - you can probably 
replace the ASP with PHP in ten minutes.
You could also use any of Mason, embperl or template toolkit combined 
with modperl to do the job in slightly more time but with better 
scaling, security and general language goodness.

As somebody who spent almost a year of his life programming with ASP 
(now back in the wonderful world of modperl and much happier, thanks) I 
would reccomend you stay well away from it. I would also avoid running 
internet services from a home pc running windows unless you want to be 
hacked PDQ. You can get Linux Virtual Private Servers from about 20 quid

a month or install linux dual boot to learn about web servers properly 
without exposing your private documents to hackers and virus.

There are some very good books on starting out with apache around now - 
O Reilly have several, and so do Manning and Sams iirc.

regards,

A.

Re: ASP?

[Aaron Trevena <aa...@tuskerdirect.com>]

techies stpauls wrote:

>I am a newby to the whole apache thing. Managed to get it working and serving
>webpages at home using apache 2 ?(Win32) and no-ip.com, my friend asked me if
>it did asp, and sent me a date of birth asp webpage, I stuck it in the httpdocs
>folder and it kinda works, but my question is do I need configure and install
>modperl on the machine to make it work right or should it work automaticlly, Sam
>

You can use the Apache::ASP perl module ( google or www.perldoc.com or 
www.cpan.org for details) - there is also a vbscript apache module on 
the internet somewhere but I cannot remember off the top of my head - 
but this requires the ASP code be written in PerlScript while most ASP 
is written in vbscript (an even more crippled version of visual basic).

Apache does not natively support ASP, you can do everything ASP does and 
better with apache and any programming language - you can probably 
replace the ASP with PHP in ten minutes.
You could also use any of Mason, embperl or template toolkit combined 
with modperl to do the job in slightly more time but with better 
scaling, security and general language goodness.

As somebody who spent almost a year of his life programming with ASP 
(now back in the wonderful world of modperl and much happier, thanks) I 
would reccomend you stay well away from it. I would also avoid running 
internet services from a home pc running windows unless you want to be 
hacked PDQ. You can get Linux Virtual Private Servers from about 20 quid 
a month or install linux dual boot to learn about web servers properly 
without exposing your private documents to hackers and virus.

There are some very good books on starting out with apache around now - 
O Reilly have several, and so do Manning and Sams iirc.

regards,

A.

Re: ASP?

[Randy Kobes <ra...@theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca>]

On Tue, 29 Apr 2003, techies stpauls wrote:

> I am a newby to the whole apache thing. Managed to get it
> working and serving webpages at home using apache 2 ?(Win32)
> and no-ip.com, my friend asked me if it did asp, and sent me a
> date of birth asp webpage, I stuck it in the httpdocs folder
> and it kinda works, but my question is do I need configure and
> install modperl on the machine to make it work right or should
> it work automaticlly, Sam

Check out http://www.apache-asp.org/ for documentation on
Apache::ASP, including how to install and configure it, and also
some examples. The site also has links to a mailing list, with
searchable archives.

-- 
best regards,
randy kobes