Significant Changes

This document lists changes to the WASD VMS Hypertext Services Package that have some effect on configuration or behaviour. It lists changes from version 3.1 onwards, the first to be made available as freeware.

Version 4.4   (October 1997)

• Due to optimizations in critical sections of the server and the elimination of debug code from production executables the server's performance has significantly improved.

• The server can now support multi-homed hosts and multiple-port services from the one process. Due to changes in connection request processing some NETLIB supporting TCP/IP packages can no longer provide DNS lookup (it now occurs at AST level, see the NETLIB documentation).

• Conditional rule mapping; applies rules only after certain criteria other than the initial path match are met (e.g. client internet address, browser-prefered language, browser-accepted content-type, browser identification string, authenticated remote user, HTTP method).

• The server can optionally use the VMS security profile of a SYSUAF-authenticated user name to determine whether access to a particular file or directory is permitted.

• Configurable message database, supporting multiple, concurrent languages.

• In addition to the common log format the server now supports the common+server and combined pre-defined formats, as well as user-defined formats.

• Some additional command-line server control functionality.

• Of course, the usual bugfixes (a couple of significant but not obvious ones this time) and minor refinements.

Version 4.3   (August 1997)

• MadGoat NETLIB support. As well as native Digital TCP/IP Services (UCX) support the server can now (potentially) support these packages:
  • Cisco MultiNet for OpenVMS, any version
  • PathWay from Attachmate Inc., any version
  • TCPware from Process Software Corporation, any version
  • CMU TCP/IP (VAX only) v6.5 or later is not supported due to too great a variation from the other packages.

• Activity report. This provides a graphical representation of server activity (requests and bytes transfered) for up to the previous 28 days.

• DCL scripting now has greater CGI compliance. Prior to v4.3 POSTed scripts would read the request header then the body (i.e. the full request). The CGI standard is body-only. This is now the default. A configuration parameter allows the previous behaviour to be explicitly selected.

• Logging can now be enabled and disabled on an ad hoc basis from the Server Administration Menu.

• Some minor bugfixes and refinements.

Version 4.2   (July 1997)

• Change of name from "HFRD VMS Hypertext Services" to "WASD VMS Hypertext Services". This follows a change of role and name for the Division.

• CGI scripting redesigned to improve performance through the use of persistant DCL subprocedures. Some additional configuration parameters support the reworked DCL module.

• CGIplus scripting (minor extension to standard CGI scripting) to further improve CGI performance through the use of persistant CGI applications.

• Additional server administration reports on requests (current and history) and DCL/scripting.

Version 4.1   (April 1997)

• Documentation brought more-or-less  :^)  up-to-date.

• HTTP response headers now more consistant.

• Delete-on-close for temporary files. Primarily used by the UPDate facility for previewing documents. (Beware ... any file name comprising a leading hyphen, sixteen digits and a trailing hyphen will be deleted on close!)

Version 4.0   (February 1997)

• Very significant changes to internal data structures and processing.

• Changes to startup and login procedures to more easily support multiple servers within clusters.

• On-line server administration menu providing reports, configuration and run-time actions of server. Obsoletes some of the $ HTTPD/DO=... functionality previously available from the command. More extensive server reports, and much more, available via /httpd/-/admin/ (obsoletes /httpd/-/report/). These menus and dialogues generally require an HTML-table-capable browser, such as Netscape Navigator.

• Ability to configure server characterstics requires changes to the format of the HTTPD$CONFIG and HTTPD$AUTH files. Both are backward compatible, but if upgrading and using the on-line configuration the format will be changed the first time they are updated.

• HTTPd server becomes HTTP-cookie-aware.

Version 3.4   (October 1996)

• More extensive server reports (via /httpd/-/report/ ... obsoleted by v4.0)

• Minor changes to error reporting.

Version 3.3   (August 1996)

• ``Basic'' and ``Digest'' authentication and path authorization. The digest scheme has, to date, only been tested against NCSA X Mosaic 2.7-4b, which seems to behave a little flakey when reloading documents, and does not elegantly support stale nonces.

• A configurable module is provided to automatically convert variable to stream-LF record format files. The stream format is much more efficiently processed by the server. (VARIABLE and VFC are read record-by-record, all others in block mode).

• To allow controlled access using authorization the server report is now generated via a path, as in the anchor ``<A HREF=/httpd/-/report>'' (obsoleted by v4.0)

Version 3.2   (April 1996)

• The HTTPD$CONF configuration file no longer requires the encoding directive (7bit, 8bit, binary, etc.). This must be removed before upgrading from earlier versions. Encoding is now determined from the VMS file record format (VARIABLE and VFC are read record-by-record, all others in block mode).

• Persistent connections (HTTP/1.0 defacto standard) are now supported (for the majority of HTTP transactions). This significantly reduces request network overhead.

Version 3.1   (January 1996)

• Initial GNU Licensed freeware release.