Summary Matrix - Windows Environment

Summary Matrix - Unix Environment

Detailed Information on the Windows Environments

Windows - Static

The Windows environment for the Static plan consists of Windows Server 2003, with Internet Information Services 6.0. Webalizer statistics are available.

This plan also includes IIS Password, which uses Basic HTTP Authentication for password protecting web sites on IIS. Additionally, there is an extensive list of default MIME types installed (over 300).

Windows - Dynamic

The Windows environment for the Dynamic plan adds a number of useful features to the Static plan (Windows Server 2003 with Internet Information Services 6.0 and IIS Password).

• ASP - Active Server Pages (ASP), is a technology that enables dynamic and interactive web pages. ASP uses server-side scripting to dynamically produce web pages that are not affected by the type of browser the web site visitor is using. The default scripting language used for writing ASP is VBScript, although you can use other scripting languages like JScript. ASP pages have the extension .asp instead of .htm. When a page with the extension .asp is requested by a browser, the web server knows to interpret any ASP contained within the web page before sending the resulting HTML to the browser. This way all the ASP is run on the web server and no ASP will ever be passed to the web browser.
• .NET 3.0 - Microsoft ASP.NET is a free technology that allows programmers to create dynamic web applications. ASP.NET can be used to create anything from small, personal websites through to large, enterprise-class web applications. All you need to get started with ASP.NET is the free .NET Framework and the free Visual Web Developer - available here.
• COM+ Access - Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) enables software components to communicate. COM is used by developers to create re-usable software components, link components together to build applications, and take advantage of Windows services. The family of COM technologies includes COM+, Distributed COM (DCOM) and ActiveX Controls. COM is used in applications such as the Microsoft Office Family of products. For example COM OLE technology allows Word documents to dynamically link to data in Excel spreadsheets and COM Automation allows users to build scripts in their applications to perform repetitive tasks or control one application from another.
• FrontPage - FrontPage 2002 provides control of the tools and technologies needed to create and manage your web site. Start working exclusively in a familiar Office interface with no need to program, or take control of your HTML code. Access easier than ever before to tools you need with FrontPage 2002. You can create pages with a normal WYSIWYG view or write code in HTML.
• Server-Side Include (SSI) - Add text, graphic, or application information to an HTML document just before sending the HTML file to a user. SSI can be used to include, for example, a time/date stamp, a 'tip of the day', or a form for a recipient to fill out and return. This version of SSI gives you more flexibility in creating include statements, with special preprocessing directives in addition to the #INCLUDE directive.
• XML 6.0 Parser - Microsoft's XML parser is a COM component that comes with Internet Explorer 5 and higher. Once you have installed Internet Explorer, the parser is available to scripts.
• CGI Extensions - Are not supported.
• ISAPI filters - Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI), is an API developed to provide the application developers with a powerful way to extend the functionality of Internet Information Server (IIS). Although ISAPI extensions by no means are limited to IIS, they are extensively used in conjunction with MS-IIS.
• SQLXML 3.0 SP2 - SQLXML enables XML support for SQL Server, bridging the gap between XML and relational data. You can create an XML view of your existing relational data and work with it as if it were an XML file.
• CDOSYS - CDOSYS is the successor of CDONTS, an easy way to send emails from webpages. CDONTS was discontinued in Windows XP, so web authors must now use CDOSYS instead. CDOSYS is as easy to use as CDONTS, however CDOSYS also allows authors to create much more sophisticated emails using html and datasources.
• Indexing Service - Indexing Service is a base service for Windows 2000 or later that extracts content from files and constructs an indexed catalog to facilitate efficient and rapid searching. Indexing Service can extract both text and property information from files on the local host and on remote, networked hosts. The files can be simply members of a selected file system or part of a virtual Web hosted by, for example, Internet Information Services (IIS).

Windows - Database

The Windows environment for the Database plan adds database functionality to the Dynamic plan described above.

• Microsoft SQL Database - Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition is a full-featured relational database management system (RDBMS) that offers a variety of administrative tools to ease the burdens of database development, maintenance and administration.
• Windows Media Services - Microsoft Windows Media Services 9 Series is an industrial-strength platform for streaming live or on-demand audio and video content over the Internet or an intranet. Use Windows Media Services to configure and manage one or more streaming media servers that deliver your content to clients.

Detailed Information on the Unix Environments

Unix - Static

The Unix webhosting environment for the Static plan is built on Gentoo Linux, with Apache 2.0. Webalizer statistics are available.

This plan also includes .htaccess support, for password protection and directory attribute customisation.

Unix - Dynamic

The Unix environment for the Dynamic plan adds a number of useful features to the Static plan:

• CGI scripting support - CGI scripting support gives the user the ability to have scripts run direct from the command line, outside of an actual webpage. This is useful in such instances that the user requires timed script execution, based on a CRON job. This includes Perl (libwww, etc...) and PHP (GD, XML, etc...).
• PHP 5.2 Support - This allows the designer access to the power of the PHP scripting language to create dynamic pages and content. PHP is a strong choice due to its extensive community support, free scripts available and inbuilt functions to do just about anything you require.
• Outbound email support - Using the PHP mail() function, or the CGI equivalent customers will be able to write scripts to send emails directly from their website. Be it a contact form or a small mailing list that they wish to use based from their website. No special extensions are required.
• Crontab - Cron is the scheduling daemon in Unix that executes commands at specified dates and times according to instructions in a file. This is particularly useful for customers needing to execute scripts at times that they will not be available, or for repetitive tasks that they do not need to administer. Cron can also be configured to send any failure messages to an email address to advise of the break.
• Htsearch - Htsearch is part of the ht://Dig package. This is in essence a piece of software that indexes your website, and stores the information in database files. From there, the user can query the database based on a search string and have relevant results displayed. This is a very useful in-house feature for customers with large sites, or customers who store particular data on their site, i.e. archives.sa.gov.au, who store a listing of articles for use in legal and other areas.

Unix - Database

The Unix environment for the Database plan adds database functionality to the Dynamic plan described above.

• PHP 5.2 Support - For the Database hosting, we support all MySQL function calls, as you would expect.
• MySQL Database - MySQL 5.0 Database Server is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL), the most popular language for adding, accessing, and processing data in a database. MySQL is noted mainly for its speed, reliability, and flexibility. We provide a single MySQL 5 database for use with the Unix-Database hosting product.