Not Too Patchy
By Brian Wilson
At the Apache conference in Orlando last year, the Apache team announced the first alpha release of Apache Server 2.0. At this writing, it has just released alpha 9, and there's reason to believe the beta will be released at this year's conference.
Better Support for NT
The biggest change in Apache 2.0 is the introduction of multiprocessing modules. Apache 1.x was written for the Unix process model and then ported to other operating systems by popular demand. The 1.x version uses the "preforking" process model. A root Apache daemon forks multiple child processes to handle multiple connections to clients. On Unix, the root process keeps tabs on the children, starting more when load goes up and killing off processes when load goes down. Because other platforms don't support the fork-system call, a single process has to manage all connections, limiting Apache's performance on those platforms. Apache 2.0 supports multiple process models including threads on both Unix and NT platforms. For the first time, Apache performance on NT is as good as it is on Unix.
In Apache 2.0, the process model has been moved into a module that you select at compile time to support your platform. There are currently five modules, including special support for Windows NT and BeOS. The most dramatic change is Apache's improvement on the NT platform.
