The ODB Plug-In and WebSTAR.root

This new plug-in allows WebSTAR to read and write a Frontier-compatible object database.

The database is called WebSTAR.root. It must be located in the same folder as the WebSTAR application. It's automatically opened by the plug-in when WebSTAR launches.

The object database takes the place of the Mac file system. For high traffic sites this can offer as much as a two-to-one improvement in hits-per-second (maybe more, we're still testing) because the object database is faster than the Mac file system.

Requires Frontier 4.2b8 or greater

For more information see Frontier 4.2 Betas.

To install, download:

ftp://ftp.scripting.com/userland/webstar.root.sit.hqx

Copy WebSTAR.root into the same folder as the WebSTAR app. Copy the plug-in file into the Plug-Ins subfolder of the WebSTAR folder. Quit WebSTAR if it's running and relaunch it.

Launch Frontier. You should see a Scripts menu. Choose Setup .FCGIs from the Scripts menu. For more info see Commands in WebSTAR 2.0's Shared Menu.

Launch the WebSTAR Admin app. For each type that you want to be routed thru the object database, add a suffix mapping, choosing ODB PLUG-IN from the popup menu. All other fields except the suffix field can be left blank.

For example, to do this for HTML text files, edit the suffix mapping for ".HTML" and choose ODB PLUG-IN from the popup menu.

Do this for ".GIF" and ".JPEG" and any other file types that you have in your website. You can choose to store some or all of your file types in the object database.

In WebSTAR, choose Load Website from the Scripts menu. Choose the folder you want to load. In order for URLs in your pages to work without modification, be sure to load only folders at the top level of your WebSTAR folder.

This operation can also be performed from a script, using webstar.root.loadSite. There are other scripts in system.verbs.apps.webstar.root that may help you manage your site.

You can open WebSTAR.root with Frontier to see how it works. It's best to operate on a copy of this file.

Comments and suggestions on the Webstar-talk or Frontier-talk lists.

---

© Copyright 1996-97 UserLand Software. This page was last built on 5/7/97; 1:22:44 PM. It was originally posted on 10/18/96; 7:48:26 PM. Internet service provided by Conxion.