Apple Mac OS X Server (Administrator’s Guide) - Manual (Page 337)

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C H A P T E R
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Web Service
Web service in Mac OS X Server offers an integrated Internet server solution. Web service is
easy to set up and manage, so you don’t need to be an experienced Web administrator to set
up multiple Web sites and configure and monitor your Web server.
Web service in Mac OS X Server is based on Apache, an open-source HTTP Web server. A Web
server responds to requests for HTML Web pages stored on your site. Open-source software
allows anyone to view and modify the source code to make changes and improvements. This
has led to Apache’s widespread use, making it the most popular Web server on the Internet
today.
Web administrators can use Server Settings to administer Web service without knowing anything
about advanced settings or configuration files. Web administrators proficient with Apache can
choose to administer Web service using Apache’s advanced features.
In addition, Web service in Mac OS X Server includes a high-performance, front-end cache
that improves performance for Web sites that use static HTML pages. With this cache, static
data doesn’t need to be accessed by the server each time it is requested.
Web service also includes support for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning,
known as WebDAV. With WebDAV capability, your client users can check out Web pages, make
changes, and then check the pages back in while the site is running. In addition, the WebDAV
command set is rich enough that client computers with Mac OS X installed can use a
WebDAV-enabled Web server as if it were a file server.
Since Web service is based on Apache, you can add advanced features with plug-in modules.
Apache modules allow you to add support for Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Java,
and CGI languages such as Python.