[mapserver-users] mapserver & windoze NT 4 vs. 2000 question

[Ed McNierney]

Tanya -

The short answer is - it doesn't matter.

I have been using MapServer on Windows 2000 (Server and Professional)
for a year now.  There have been absolutely ZERO issues related to
Windows 2000.  As Perry noted, many users have
startup/setup/configuration issues on various operating systems, and
some of those users were running on Windows 2000.  However, the issues
weren't related to the operating system in my recollection.

The only exception I can think of is the matter of how IIS implements
anonymous user security for Web clients; it's nothing complicated, but
you need to understand how it works in order for MapServer to access the
files it needs.

>From a performance perspective, some enormous majority of your total
runtime will happen INSIDE the MapServer CGI program; whether Apache or
IIS processes your HTTP requests and passes them on to the CGI program
faster or slower won't add up to a hill of beans.  I cannot imagine
there being a noticeable performance difference between the two unless
you're creating very complex Web pages that contain very simple maps!

You should probably start by moving to Apache on Windows 2000, simply
because there's no good reason to change that variable - if it ain't
broke, leave it alone.  You can switch to IIS when you want to - if you
want to - when and if there's a good reason to do that.

	- Ed

Ed McNierney
Chief Mapmaker
TopoZone.com

-----Original Message-----
From: TCHaddad [mailto:TCHaddad at cshore.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 7:25 PM
To: mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
Subject: [mapserver-users] mapserver & windoze NT 4 vs. 2000 question



So....

we may be getting a new box in our office that our mapserver app.s will
be moving to. I'm fishing for possible migration issues that might be
significant enough to sway what we actually buy:

Right now we have a Mapserver app. running on an NT 4.0 SP 6 workstation
(not server), with Apache 1.3.20 as a service. Everything works great. 

In spec-ing out what our choices are for something new, we're being
given the choice of a box with NT 4.0 again (server version this time)
or with Windows 2000 (server version), for the same price. I guess both
come with IIS 5.0, so Apache would no longer be mandatory.

My questions are: do I care which of these 2 Operating systems we
choose? Are there any significant issues as far as Mapserver or Mapplet
are concerned? What about if we get into more XML/ the WMS stuff in 3.5?
I've never had a complaint with Apache... are there Mapserver issues
with IIS?

Apologies in advance if these are dumb/moot questions, I just know
nothing about Win 2k server and saw from the archive that a few people
may have had issues. As long as I hear that none are major obstacles,
I'm confident we can work out any minor kinks.

Thanks to all,

Tanya