Hi Tom,

The problem with solutions like this is that they don't address a full range of functionality in most cases. There've been free Web Server Active X controls around since the very beginning of the Web - I seem to remember one of the first things I ever looked at was a Delphi Web Server implementation that could run in VFP.

There are a number of problems. First if you're doing this in VFP you have hte whole issue of VFP being single threaded, so it can only process a single request at a time no matter what. The best even an ACtiveX control can do is queue up requests one after the other.

The other issue is more advanced concepts like security - I haven't looked at the Eeva server in some time, but I don't think it does Windows Authetnication for example. Not sure whether you can even do Basic Authentication without writing it yourself either.

This is not to say that this can't be useful in some scenarios. I think a control based approach like this would work great for peer to peer applications that need to communicate and you have one or maybe a few clients. Using HTTP is kind of natural in this environment.

But for something that actually runs over the internet you have to be very careful in terms of security issues, since there are lots of issues that can compromise your machine very easily if you're not careful. That and the lack of any scalability make this a tough sell for a full online application. There's a reason that Windows and other platforms have security alerts and security reviews and applications exposed to the Internet have a high potential for serious data security breaches.


The other thing to remember is that if you use a full Web Server like IIS you get everything that is built into that platform. The security features, the caching, the request optimization, support for multiple clients that may use different protocol versions, that understand chunked requests etc. etc. These are all things that are non-trivial to implement and usually are not part of a small Web server control application, yet can result in clients getting connections refused.

So it's a good idea in some scearios, but certainly not a solution that can be applied across the board...

+++ Rick ---









>I suspect there are better more powerful, more complete (and more expensive) solutions to creating dynamic web content but has anyone been looking at the pros and cons of eeva webserver?
>
>This free product does not require anything more than pure VFP code. Things like IIS, ADO, dotNET are not necessary. Follow these few steps to quickly evaluate the results:
>
>1.) Download the zip file from this link: http://www.eetasoft.ee/ewebserv.htm
>2.) Unzip the files (retain paths - only need for the CSS file)
>3.) Start VFP and CD to the directory you unzipped the Eeva Webserver
>4.) From the VFP command window type: DO FORM server
>5.) Enter this url: http://localhost/bills.htm in the address line of your browser.
>
>That is it. Now check out the code in the bills.htm file and you will see it is VFP inside some code blocks. Check out this link on the fox.wikis.com site for more info:
>
>http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~WebServerInFoxPro
>
>Pretty slick way to very quickly and easily create dynamic web content. I am sure a full blown dotNET solution using C#.NET or VB.NET with ASP.NET and ADO.NET is much more appealing and powerful, but may not be required for all users. This product looks very appealing to quickly and easily output dynamic data driven content to the web.
>
>Anyone using it?