At 12:13 13/03/2002 +0000, Stephan Goeldi wrote:

...

As a generalisation, using mod_proxy is probably less resource demanding that using mod_rewrite and an entirely sensible choice in many cases.

What leads you to this conclusion?

I should probably have said "...arguably less resource demanding...". I would expect the amount of code that needs to be executed to match and rewrite the URL, and get the proxy request on the road is less with mod_proxy than mod_rewrite. My reasoning is that: 1. using string comparison for a match at the head of a string and string concatenation to construct a revised string (a la mod_proxy) is probably cheaper in terms of memory used and mill time expended than pattern matching and substitution with a regular expression engine (a la mod_rewrite). 2. as with many things, deciding not to do something can often be a bigger burden that doing something. I would expect mod_proxy to faster deciding that an incoming URL did not match the ProxyPass criteria by using string comparison for a match at the head of a string than mod_rewrite running a regex match, even if mod_rewrite is using a compiled expression. But this isn't a religious issue for me. I'm happy to concede the field rather than argue the pros and cons of when to use ProxyPass (for simple URL transformations in my view) and when to use RewriteRule (only when ProxyPass cannot handle it in my view).