Features

AOLserver Administration Features

Access Control:

AOLserver's access control system allows you to define users, assign users to groups, and set permissions on individual database tables, pages, or page hierarchies.

When defining permissions for the AOLserver, you can specify lists of users to allow or disallow, lists of groups to allow or disallow, and hosts (specified either by host name or IP address) to allow or disallow for each method/URL combination..

See Chapter 4 for information on using the access control system.

Data Transfer and Security:

AOLserver can be configured to communicate using the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to support commerce applications.

See Chapter 3 for information on configuring sockets, and Chapter 6 for information on SSL.

Multi-homing:

AOLserver allows you to run multiple virtual servers on one host by attaching them to different port and/or IP address combinations.

See Chapter 3 for information on configuring AOLserver for multi-homing.

Database Services Features

AOLserver manages pools of open connections to databases. These pools let AOLserver quickly service simultaneous database requests (without continuously opening and closing the database), and to prevent a large number of HTTP requests from overloading the system. Both the Tcl and C APIs provide access to these database pools.

Illustra Database Connection:

AOLserver can be configured to support the Illustra object-oriented relational database. All tables in the Illustra database are available to you through AOLserver for automatic forms generation and customization.

See Chapter 3 for information on configuring AOLserver to use an Illustra database. See Chapter 8 for information on using all of the database services features with Illustra.

Database Table Manipulation:

AOLserver provides a forms interface that allows you to create tables, extend tables, or delete tables in your database, all from a Web browser. You can customize your tables and columns with the same forms-based interface, and you can specify that the server automatically send mail when records are inserted, updated, and deleted. You can also use the SQL interface provided by your database.

See Chapter 8 for information on the forms interface for manipulating database tables.

Automatic Forms Creation:

AOLserver dynamically generates Search, Entry, and Update forms for any table in your database. These forms can be used to query and manipulate the data in the database without writing any code, and they always reflect the current state of the database.

See Chapter 8 for information on automatic forms creation.

Forms Customization:

You can customize the appearance of your forms with table descriptions, column descriptions, form templates, default values for columns, column input and display types, and column order. You can specify whether links to update forms appear on search results pages, and how many sort levels appear on the search forms.

See Chapter 8 for information on customizing forms.

Full-Text Processing with Illustra:

AOLserver will maintain a full text index of every page stored at your site. If you use AOLpress to change or add content, this index is automatically updated. You can also synchronize your content with the full text index at any time.

AOLserver provides an HTML form for searching this index. You can customize the appearance of the full text search and results forms by specifying form templates and label text for the buttons on the forms.

The AutoLinking feature will suggest links from a given page to content indexed with AOLserver. AOLserver will also archive (and retrieve) old versions of pages.

See Chapter 3 for information on configuring full text features. See Chapter 9 for information on using and customizing the full text features. See the User's Guide to AOLpress for information on AutoLinking.

Programming Interface Features

Server-parsed HTML Tags:

AOLserver supports standard server-parsed HTML. The #include directive allows you to insert a specified text file into the HTML text. The #exec directive runs ordinary programs or CGI scripts. The #nstcl directive executes a Tcl script. Other available directives are #config (control how the file is parsed), #echo (echo the data in a variable), #fsize (return the size of a file), and #flastmod (print date a file was last modified).

AOLserver can be configured to parse all pages, or specific groups of pages based on their extension.

See Chapter 3 for information on configuring AOLserver for server-parsed HTML. See Chapter 1 in the AOLserver CGI Developer's Guide for information on using server-parsed HTML tags.

Tcl Interface:

AOLserver can be extended using the Tcl scripting language. AOLserver provides a powerful Tcl API containing a full array of functions and primitives that give you access to all of AOLserver's core functionality and SQL databases. Tcl functions are available to interact with the connection, implement scheduled procedures, maintain state, access the sockets and threads interfaces, roll access logs, maintain permissions, access the database, and much more.

An HTML forms interface within AOLserver allows you to create, update, and test Tcl scripts instantly, without leaving your browser. You can create scripts in a private Tcl library for each virtual server, or in a library shared by multiple virtual servers. Or, you can create Tcl scripts in the pages directory of the virtual server. Since Tcl is embedded in AOLserver, a separate process is not required to run a Tcl script, making Tcl extensions much more efficient than CGI-based extensions.

See the AOLserver Tcl Developer's Guide for information on developing Tcl scripts and information on AOLserver's Tcl API.

C Interface:

AOLserver can also be extended with the C API. The C API lets you write your own logging routines, access control system, communications drivers, or database drivers. It provides all the necessary functions and structures you need to access AOLserver's core functionality and the database.

To use the C API, you compile your C module into a Unix shared library. AOLserver will dynamically load the module and call your initialization function.

See Chapter 2 in the AOLserver C Developer's Guide for information on developing loadable C modules and information on AOLserver's C API.

CGI Support, Including CGI File Type Activation:

AOLserver provides full CGI support. Because running a CGI program requires a separate process to be created, it is less efficient than extending AOLserver with Tcl or C.

You can configure AOLserver to look for CGI programs in a specific directory, or you can store CGI programs near the HTML files and refer to them using the .cgi file type. Any file with the .cgi extension will be interpreted as a CGI program by AOLserver. You can configure AOLserver to activate the .cgi file type in specific directories or groups of directories.

See Chapter 3 for instructions on configuring AOLserver for CGI. See Chapter 2 in the AOLserver CGI Developer's Guide for information on how to extend AOLserver using CGI.