Welcome to the `Dark Side'
Well we've finally succumbed to the 'Dark Side', one of our main development
machines is now running IE4! What has made us finally give in and
install this and remove all traces of IE3. Was it a desire to use
more of the 128M Ram so that we could get 'you are running low on
memory' messages with only a couple of browser windows open ? No,
what made us lose all sense and reason was Option Pack for NT4. This
collection from Microsoft offers the following mouth watering selection
of software:
To paraphrase the documentation:
Internet Information Server 4.0 which complies with the HTTP
1.1 standard, the ability to customize HTTP error messages, and support
for HTTP headers.
NNTP Service supports the Internet-standard Network News Transport
Protocol (NNTP) and is fully compatible with other NNTP servers and
clients.
SMTP Service uses the standard Internet protocol Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to transport and deliver messages
Active Server Pages
Script Debugger to debug ASP pages containing scripts
Management Console hosts the programs, called snap-ins, that
administrators use to manage their servers.
Transaction Server (MTS) is a transaction-processing system
for developing, deploying, and managing distributed server applications.
Transaction processing is crucial for many business applications.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 provides a secure way to exchange
information between clients and servers. Unlike previous SSL implementations,
SSL 3.0 provides a way for the server to verify who the client is,
without the user having to log on to the server.
Index Server 2.0 provides automatic content indexing of HTML
pages and other documents The file search engine for supports searches
of Office, HTML, ASP, and NetShow™ file formats in seven languages.
Additional Administration Options both IIS 4.0 and Index Server
have Web-based administration tools that provide for remote management
of your server from almost any browser on any platform.
Site Server Express allows site administrators to analyze server
log files, visualize and analyze site content.
Certificate Server is a general-purpose, highly customizable
server application for managing the issuance, revocation, and renewal
of digital certificates.
Data Access Components version 1.5 consist of ActiveX Data
Objects (ADO) and Remote Data Service (RDS), the OLE DB Provider for
ODBC, and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC).
Message Queue (MSMQ) version 1.0 makes it easy for application
programs to communicate with other application programs quickly, reliably,
and asynchronously by sending and receiving messages.
Internet Connection Services for Remote Access Service (RAS) version
1.0 supplements Windows NT Server basic networking services with
the provision of seamless and secure telecommuting services via the
Internet.
A veritable feast of 'Webby' bits to delight, but this Option Pack
requires you to have IE4 on your server before you can install them.
This requirement has come in for a lot of justifiable criticism from
the IT industry, who are concerned about the stability of IE4, particularly
when running on your main webserver. However, we were very keen to
take a close look at Index Server 2; those of you who know Mark will
know that he battled in the early beta days, with Index Server 1,
(and later 1.1) producing the Debrief site (www.debrief.co.uk), which
was featured in a Real World column some time ago. So we were interested
to see if they had implemented some of the things that they had promised,
and fixed some of the broken bits.
FTP from Hell
First job was to get the files, so a look at the Microsoft web site
revealed two choices, one was to install on-line. This we don't like
to do, as we prefer to have the files locally for any reinstalling
later if needed. The other choice was to download the files and install
later. Great we thought, but what have they done? 53 separate files
to download! Now, we both have leased lines and so a 75M download
does not bother us, but to have to sit there clicking on a link, waiting
for the 'open/save' dialog box to come up before you could click on
the next link, did not appeal. So after looking at the URL's of these
files from the source HTML of the download page. We wrote an HTML
page using JavaScript to open a new browser window for each file location
and so automate the process a bit. This code is neither perfect nor
pretty but, it's just one of those things that had to be done!
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft Text Viewer">
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
function mywait() {
for (x = 1; x < 100000; x++){
}
}
//-->
</script>
</HEAD>
<BODY LINK="#0000ff" VLINK="#800080">
Starting to download Option pack.....hold tight !
<script language="JavaScript">
window.open("http://msvaus1.www.conxion.com/msdownload/
ntoptionpack/En/x86/winnt.srv/setup3.cab")
mywait()
window.open("http://msvaus1.www.conxion.com/msdownload/
ntoptionpack/En/x86/winnt.srv/ado.cab")
mywait()
window.open("http://msvaus1.www.conxion.com/msdownload/
ntoptionpack/En/x86/winnt.srv/brazos.cab")
mywait()
..................etc etc
We choose Netscape Navigator 4 for this task and as you can see
from the resulting screen shot, the theory worked, For those of
you interested in such things, the height of that task bar is exactly
two Honeyballs!
Science Fiction?
The next day Mark went down to a Microsoft presentation on Site Server at the Science Museum, and the first thing he was presented with was a CD containing Option Pack, after all that downloading! The presentation was very interesting, explaining as it did how to use current and forthcoming Microsoft products to produce a commercial web site with on-line shopping and secure credit card transactions. At this stage in the presentation, a point was raised about how any company smaller than the likes of the supermarkets, could arrange credit card transactions over the web. When, in our collective experience, the banks involved did not have in place procedures to provide such a service. This is an issue that we are researching at the moment and if any of you have any tales to tell of your experience of implementing credit card transactions over the web then please email one of us.
The question was also raised of gathering marketing statistics about web users, and personalisation of sites based on previous visits. With the current technology the best that we can do if we are trying to keep track of visitors and whether, more importantly, they revisit, is to use cookies. But this technique has one fundamental flaw, what you are keeping track of is not the web user but the browser. If you were to use a different browser, then you would appear as a different user, or if someone else was to use your browser then their preferences would be attributed to you. Hardly finely honed marketing information, but better than nothing. What is really required is a way of recognising a web user, checking against a central site on their preferences, interests etc and then personalising the site accordingly. This would be a bit like going to your local supermarket and finding they had rearranged the goods in order based on your needs. Although this may already be what they are trying to do, because whenever one goes to the local supermarket nothing seems to be in the same place as before!
Big Brother?
So it was with great interest that we read the other day on the front page of the Telegraph that the Government is working on smartcards as a form of id. Now there are many issues of privacy involved here. But say these cards are adopted, then by plugging it into a PC not only is the PC configured the way you like it, but when you go shopping on the web, there are no forms to fill out, and sites present themselves to you and your needs. On-line shopping in this country could soon be a reality, with:
a) These cards allowing small value transactions, and personalisation of sites.
b) The satellite companies providing large amounts of low cost bandwidth into the home via the existing network
c) Companies like BT providing low bandwidth but very fast connect / disconnect lines for the 'up link' like the `Home Highway' service to be launched this spring.
With all this in the offing we could see set-top internet connection in many homes before long. Local calls would not have to be free, seemingly a stumbling block for Telecom companies to provide, as the on-line time would be so small the existing phone network could easily cope. As for paying for the down-link bandwidth, then already people are used to paying for satellite channels and so there would be little consumer resistance. If on-line shopping really took off, then supermarkets may become just distribution depots, with smaller shops within to supply immediate needs like newspapers, cigarettes, sandwiches. The large out of town complexes would be ideally suited to this, with all the building of these going on at present perhaps they know something that we don't....
Object of desire?
Returning to our original object of desire, Index Server 2. This will take all or part of a file system and index the contents of the files that it has filters for, enabling you to query and find the information, based on content, creation time, file size and many other parameters. This is a great product and is free, so we had looked forward to version 2. What a disappointment, though, that there is no sign of the promised real language query language, enabling us to enter queries like 'show me files that contain Microsoft and Netscape but without war which I wrote last week'. When abstracts or the file with the matched words are shown, as before all the formatting is stripped out, even from HTML files. HTML files containing scripts show the script code when the abstracts are shown.
Index server 2.0 is claimed to be some twice the speed of the already very fast ver 1.1. Certainly there are some useful additions that go some way to making this a more mature product. But it is a shame that such a fantastic piece of software does not get more attention from Microsoft
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