[ms4w-users] MS4W Production Status

[Paul Spencer]

Yes, I think you have understood me precisely :)

Steve Schnick wrote:
> Thanks, Paul. That was exactly what I was looking for.
> 
> So there are no specific configuration settings that you are aware of in
> the MS4W distribution (e.g., Apache, PHP, etc.) that would render the
> MS4W installation unsuitable for production? As I understand it, the
> "non-production" caveat means that the developers of MS4W will take no
> responsibility for its use in a production environment (which seems fair
> to me). Is this correct?
> 
> Steve
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Spencer [mailto:pspencer at dmsolutions.ca] 
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 12:49 PM
> To: Steve Schnick
> Cc: ms4w-users at lists.maptools.org
> Subject: Re: [ms4w-users] MS4W Production Status
> 
> Steve,
> 
> there are a couple of reasons...
> 
> When we first put this together, there were warnings in the Apache
> documentation about its use on Windows not being as secure/stable as on
> *nix systems.  I'm not sure if this has changed since we updated to 2.0
> .. To offset this, I suppose you could consider running with IIS but
> I'm not sure that I would consider IIS *more* stable/secure than Apache
> ;)
> 
> When we first put this together, it was pretty experimental.  I would
> venture to guess that since it has been around for a while now, we could
> consider it more stable by volume of useage and lack of problems.
> 
> Probably the most significant issue, however, is that we are not
> prepared to warrant and support it as such, including any legal
> obligations that might be involved in such a claim.  As with most
> software, including a lot of commercial software, it is provided AS-IS
> and is not warranted for any particular purpose.  We provide it to the
> community because it is a tool we have found useful for several
> purposes, including aiding in rapid deployment, training situations
> where replication of a consistent environment is key, and in packaging
> some of our software.
> 
> AFAIK, all of the components included with MS4W are particularly stable
> and you should not feel that you cannot use this for a production
> environment, but we will accept no responsibility if you do and
> something fails.
> 
> As an additional note, there was a bug reported recently with ADODB
> talking to PostgreSQL (or failing to) because of a problem with the PHP
> version we included with the last update.  This is exactly the type of
> situation which is well beyond our control or ability to detect. 
> However, if we said it was production quality, there should be a
> reasonable expectation that you could update your server and not crash
> anything.  If you did, and ran into this issue ... what a mess!
> 
> We will definitely continue to support ms4w and release new versions to
> fix problems and introduce new features, but we do not currently plan to
> advocate its use in any sort of production environment.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Paul
> 
> Steve Schnick wrote:
> 
>>Could someone please explain why the MS4W package is considered NOT 
>>stable and NOT suitable for production purposes? Is it because of some
> 
> 
>>security settings in the default Apache configuration, the low-level 
>>CGI executables (i.e., Mapserver) or something else? What would it 
>>take to convert the default MS4W installation into a 
>>production-quality installation?
>> 
>>Thanks.
>>
>>
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> 

-- 
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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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