Disclaimer: I've done both Squid and Apache, though I definitely fall into the Squid camp. Regardless, I'll agree that Squid or Apache in front of Zope is the right way to do things. Either can do URL rewriting; either can have access controls; either can do caching; either can do SSL acceleration. Apache's URL rewriting is faster (in-process), while Squid's is much more flexible (external helper, I use pyredir: http://freshmeat.net/projects/pyredir - which is in Python, and has simple enough config file rules that put Apache rewrite rules to shame). Apache has strength in support for transfer encodings (mod_gzip); Squid does not. The problem with transfer encoding is that it doesn't usually play well with cached content. It also really is only a benefit for text, since images are usually well-compressed already. This might be good for an e-commerce site. Squid has faster and more tunable caching. This takes load off the app servers better. Given the performance characteristics of the above two statements, which I believe to be true, I would make the following recommendation: If you are running a site with lots of cacheable content (semi-dynamic, like a news site), use Squid. If you are running an e-commerce site, use Apache, and get the benefits of transfer encoding on your dynamic textual pages that are not likely cacheable. Sean -----Original Message----- From: David Hart [mailto:dhart@atlantisblue.com.au] Sent: Sunday, October 27, 2002 9:32 PM To: Zope Org Subject: Re: [Zope] why run apache in front of zope? On servers I administer, we do virtual hosting for many kinds of websites on the same server: filesystem+CGI, filesystem+PHP4, and Zope. Apache provides a convenient and standard way to do virtual hosting. It's easy to front-end Zope sites with mod_proxy, plus I can enable gzip compression on any kind of site with mod_gzip and enable SSL encryption any kind of site with mod_ssl. -dave Marc Lindahl wrote:

I asked the same question and concluded there's no benefit I can see - I ended up running SQUID in front of Zserver which seems to be just dandy, and SQUID offers security comparable (afik) to apache, if not better.

on 10/19/02 9:05 PM, Garry Galinsky at garry@galinsky.net scrivened:

...

This may be an obvious question to many, but not to me... why do so many people run Zope behind an Apache server? What are the benefits of an Apache server, or otherwise, what are the limitations of the Zope web server? I currently run Zope alone and am evaluating the benefits of use Apache. Thanks.

Garry Galinsky

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