Hi Patrick,
Yes I agree entirely, I would not host my own public web application... I want
a webhoster who monitors the site 24x7, and manages security etc.
The thing about TinyWeb is that if a client wants a graphical web app for their
DP app, you could provide it with TinyWeb as a personal webserver and even
shared it you choose (potentially across slow wan connections), I haven't tried
but I think it supports simple .htaccess userlists.
One disadvantage with commercial hosting and DP, is that I have never been able
to get it to work with IIS. It spits the dummy when DP starts... I can run many
other DOS apps through IIS, just not DP. I can even run the DOS version of
PKZip and UnZip, which can both act on a provided file, and ouput to a new file
which is about all I want DP to do, other than its internal processing.
I can get DP to run on Windows using Apache, but I have not found one
commercial webhoster using this combination.
I can get DP to run on Linux webhosts, but only when using DOSEMU, and the two
pronged rub here, is that it is slower than straight Windows, and not many
commerical webhosters will install DOSEMU. So commercial webhosting of DP apps
is not as straighfroward as it seems.
I would love it if anyone could help me with either solution, ie getting DP to
run as a CGI thru IIS, or to introduce me to commercial Linux webhosters, who
will not insist on me running my DP apps on a dedicated host which cost a
little more that $7 a month.
Regards
Brian
----- Original Message -----
From: Patrick Riley
To: DataPerfect Users Discussion Group
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: [Dataperf] More stuff on web enabling DP
My (unsolicited) thoughts on TinyWeb:
Professional outsourced hosting costs as little as $7 a
month. With various restrictions, there are even free
hosting accounts available (often your ISP provides a
limited hosting account free to subscribers).
Unless the absolute minimum cost is the primary objective,
I'd always outsource hosting. My reasons:
ISP issues:
- Most ISPs want you to use your Internet connection
to surf the Web, not act as a Web server. Some will
terminate or surcharge your account if they find you're
using your account to connect a server to the Internet.
Performance and reliability:
- Even with a "fast" connection (ie: DSL or cable) your
bandwidth is comparably limited. Most (but not all) ISP
connections are asynchronous (slower up than down). My
relatively robust cable connection (sold as 8 megabit) is only
768KB up if you read the fine print (an these speeds are
theoretical). Most good hosting companies employ multiple
OC-3 connections directly to the Internet backbone (an OC-3
is roughly equal to 100 T1 connections and this bandwidth is
real).
- I'm sure you "lose" your Internet connection from time to
time. Good hosting companies employ switched services with
multiple paths to the Internet backbone reducing periods of
outages. Much of their infrastructure is redundant further
reducing the chances for "server not found" messages.
- Running anything on Windows means you'll crash sooner or
later. My choice for a Web server is Apache running on top of
Linux. This is offered by virtually every hosting company and
will almost never crash.
- Good hosting companies monitor their operations 24/7/365.
If your server suffers a hardware, software or other problem;
chances are it will be corrected before you ever know it was
"broken".
Security:
- Operating your own server opens you up to god only knows
what kind of exploits and attacks. Good hosting companies
employ expensive firewalls and intrusion monitoring that go way
beyond the simple firewall built into most home class routers.
Other tools:
- Almost all hosting companies offer a bundle of tools and optional
functions with their hosting accounts. These typically include things
like visitor stats, chat functions, shopping carts, E-mail, MySQL,
forms processing, etc. These would be a huge pain and expense
to set up on your own server.
Just my thoughts...
Pat Riley
PS - I don't own stock in any hosting companies.
At 02:00 PM 11/28/2006, you wrote:
Hi everyone,
As you know I am quite passionate about DP and the web. I found something a
few weeks ago and did some concept testing with it, and I think it could make
life easier for web deploying small DP apps.
Most people think a big production when they think about a web server,
however for just 58k of executable, TinyWeb, yep for even a fraction of the
size of the DP exectuable, you can run a Win32 commandline program to act as a
webserver, which will run on anything from Win98 upwards.
TinyWeb is so very simple you run the command line
tiny c:\mywebsite
and the files in c:\mywebsite are server up on port 80. With other
commandline options you can have different ports, and bind to specific IP
addresses. You can even support SSL. But for the very simplest applications the
straightforward commandline is all that is needed.
It is free for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
I am thinking of using to provide DP Demo applications as self running CDs.
I haven't done so yet, but I am confident that it would easily be done.
I noticed that someone set up a book on Wikibooks about DataPerfect,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/DataPerfect I might add a How-To about setting up
DP as a minimalist webapp.
Regards
Brian
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