This is enormously helpful. I realize that doing a Windows
port would require some serious sponsorship of some sort.
What I want to know is, assuming a sponsorship for the
port, what would be the most efficient way to do it?
Let me try to sum up the options discussed so far.
First, the web server layer:
- Use native AOLServer 3.x on Windows. Pros: It works
now (sort of). Cons: You're stuck with legacy, because
AOLServer 4 has no Windows support. (Nobody has yet said
whether OACS will require AOLServer 4 in the near to
medium-term future or what functionality one gives up by sticking
with 3.x.)
- Use AOLServer 4 on cygwin. Pros: The cygwin team
does much of the hard work. Cons: Some stuff required for
AOLServer has not been implemented on Cygwin, and getting
the Oracle driver to work could be a really nasty job.
- Fork the AOLServer code to develop a
Windows-compatible version. Nobody has seriously
mentioned this option, so I'm guessing it's a huge amount of
work, both initially and ongoing.
- Develop mod_AOLServer for Apache 2. Pros: You get
all the cool stuff that comes with Apache. Cons: The initial port
could be a lot of work (despite the existence of mod_AOLServer
for Apache 1.3) and nobody really knows what the ultimate
performance might look like.
Even assuming one of the above options is feasible, it
sounds like there's the problem of the database. If I understand
correctly, PostgreSQL only runs on Windows when compiled to
cygwin, and there's some question as to how well it would work
with a non-cygwin-based web server.
Porting to SQL Server might be an option. It would be a lot of
work, and we don't fully know yet what would be hard. However,
based on the work and knowledge of a few community
members, it seems that SQL might support the necessary
functions and that the maintenance effort could potentially be
reduced to a manageable level through a certain amount of
automated query translation.
Is this summary accurate? And if so, what would be the next
logical steps for figuring out the best option?
