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Oracle

The Oracle server is much like the Netscape server in that it is relatively easy to install and has a browser interface, which means that after you install it, you can configure your server using a Web browser. Instead of relying on arcane configurations, Oracle's configuration site already is set up. However, I've found that this built-in configuration site isn't always stable; it's actually more stable and safe to configure the server myself by editing the configuration files with a text editor. When I set this server up, it erased my configuration file. This has happened to me three or four times, although it has not been reported as a known problem. Another drawback is that the pre-established configuration does not do a backup, something I always do as part of configuration.

The Oracle server is secure, however. It supports a secure socket layer key, so when data is transferred between the server and browser, it can be encrypted. The Oracle Web Server 2.0 currently supports SSL version 2, but not version 3. It does not support S-HTTP. For authentication the Oracle Web Server not only can have individual and group-based password authentication but can match a username and password with a specific IP address or subnet. In this manner, a user attempting to gain access to the site not only must have the correct username and password but must be accessing the site from a specific computer or group of computers. This feature unique to the Oracle Web server provides an additional layer of security. Users also can be authenticated via the Oracle7 database.

Oracle allows the user to natively talk to a database so Web server requests can be queried by the database. This allows Oracle to take advantage of the power and flexibility of a database, whereas most servers just "serve" HTML pages, images, and applications.

For example, if I want to serve a book on a Web, I can take each page and turn it into a Web page. I can do this using any Web server. However, assume I want to create a site using some data that remains constant and some that is changing, such as keeping an inventory online. The spec sheets and product information would stay static, but the number of products I had on hand would change; in other words, the number of products on hand would relate to the information about that product. To serve this information on the Web, I would want to use a relational database. Because it is relational, there is no redundancy with the Oracle database.

Currently no other server programs can draw information from a database in this way. Netscape's LiveWire is the next closest software and may develop into a more dynamic application, but currently it is not up to snuff. Certainly, users can always write their own gateways, but Oracle is really the strongest commercially available product. Oracle runs on Solaris and Windows NT but not on Windows 95, and it supports the native Java environment.

The Oracle Web Server, shown in Figure 8.2, currently runs on UNIX or Windows NT. It can serve several sites with the same Web server and the same machine, but each distinct site will leave a larger footprint on your machine than will additional sites with other servers. Oracle logs files using the NCSA common format, but log files cannot be automatically archived. In general, the logging for the Oracle Web Server is not as good as with other Web servers; you can't tell what kind of Web browser is accessing the site, you cannot track individual users, it does not report referrer logs, and there are no performance measurement logs at all. However, using PL/SQL, pages that are dynamically generated from the database can be logged with a great deal of detail. Time, date, user ID, and reference page can all be captured and logged into the database, where very sophisticated statistical information can be generated. This will take some fairly advanced programming, but if you're willing to spend the time, you can actually get much better and more concise logs using the Oracle database.

Figure 8.2: The Oracle server configuration is Web-based.

This is also a very expensive commercial server and is not quite as far along for more traditional Web service than are some others. However, the database support is phenomenal. The database itself is also very expensive. However, organizations that are already running an Oracle database and want to serve that information to their intranet, or build a gateway to that database for their users will find that Oracle Web Server is an ideal solution.

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