At 18:02 29-01-00 , Steve Bassler wrote:
>Putting aside how I feel about everything Micro$oft, I'm going 
>to have to deal with this, and I think I need some help.

The last time I had to reinstall NT on my server, I put up Apache instead
of IIS, got it configured for virtual servers, put it onto my laptop,
configured my laptop for multiple-boot with NT (Apache (default), IIS, or
neither), and got that all done is less time (including Apache learning)
than it would have taken to get IIS reinstalled on my server, _not_
counting the time to research and patch the annoying CGI bugs in IIS.

> Is it [PWS] similar enough to IIS to do this, or is it a 
> different animal altogether?

Yes. To both. It is a crippled IIS, and you'll be able to test most of the
features. It has most of the bloat, most of the administration capability,
and complexity, and some of the ways it (PWS v. IIS) is crippled perhaps
only Redmond could understand.

Also, the Win 98 version is somewhat more limited than the NT version of
PWS... and of course Perl is similarly limited to what the toy O/S wannabee
is able to do.

To sum up, yes, you'll be able to get various CGI scripts and other pieces
to work under PWS. Will you be able to put all the pieces together there,
that gets a maybe, with a better chance with PWS under NT workstation than
with 98.

>Second: Frontpage.  How useful is it?  Do I need it?

If you like bad HTML that fails even basic portability tests, only then can
I imagine you'll want it. It rivals Micro$oft Office as being a great
concept that fails in the implementation and delivery.

>Third: ASP.  I've done all my scripting in perl so far.  
>Can I continue to do so or will I need to bite the bullet 
>and learn ASP?  

Perl can be run via CGI, or via ASP, as well as via command line. Some have
suggest ASP being the Redmond Kids attempts to put SSI (server side
includes) on steroids... and the analogy includes the side-effects for
many. <g>

>Does it do anything that perl can't, or do it faster 
>or more efficiently (considering the platform/environment)?

Perl can do many things easily that are difficult with other tools. Perl
can call DLLs and other Windows complexities, and has wrappers (such as in
the Win32 modules) for just about anything you might encounter.

There is a very high overhead to start tasks and do a lot of other basic
things under NT. So there are games played to improve performance by
increasing complexity. And they can be played with Perl as well as just
about anything else.

So the answer is that you can use Perl for just about anything you need.
Depending on how many layers of muddleware (middleware) are involved, it
might be an ideal tool, or possibly a quite inefficient one.

>That should be enough to start chewing on, don't you think?

You may wonder if your are chewing, or being chewed upon. <g>

Safe computing,  /Harold

ps. Under a lame excuse of server security, the Redmond Kids have
deliberately broken a few CGI environment variables, interestingly two that
are particularly relevant to portability. Check out the Microsoft Knowledge
Base for cryptic details on how to fix this, if it matters to you.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Harold A. Driscoll                 mailto:Harold(at)Driscoll.Chi.IL.US
#include <std/disclaimer>                 http://Driscoll.Chi.IL.US

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