SLAC WWW-Tech Mtg 6/4/97


Attendees: Tony Johnson, Les Cottrell, Kathryn Henniss, Andrea Chan, H. Galic, John Halperin, Bebo White, Laurie Gennari, Jennifer Masek, Lousie Addis.

Agenda:

New SCS Director

Richard Mount was introduced and talked a little about his philosophies concerning the Web.

Future Meeting Schedule

Will be once a month on the 1st Wednesday of months, same time & place. The next meeting is Wednesday 18th, June, 1997.

Update on Oracle Response Times

Tony moved the SLD NT WWW to a new faster machine. It ran faster but showed similar extended delays on Mondays and at 7pm each day. Then Tony, Connie & Les started monitoring Oracle response times and this showed no 7pm slow down. Les will try and ping www-sldnt web server to see if there is a network effect.

SPIFACE Upgrade

Tony has modified SPIFACE to by-pass the problem of large log files. The new version will be installed Friday 6/5/97. Tony will updtae comp-change.

Server Availability Issues

John talked about how CGI scripts need an extra level of thought given to them due to the fact they have to run unattended. As some examples John mentioned minimizing the dependence on multiple file systems, e.g. copy the files from AFS or NFS to the local file system, do not use symbolic links between AFS and NFS file systems since it requires the union of both file systems to be available, copy applications locally (e.g. REXX and Perl), dont use Perl requires since they drag in a lot of unused stuff. Such measures however, cause increase the development and maintenance efforts and so are not accepted lightly. Kathry suggested there may be interest in the WSC for a lunch tim workshop on writing CGI scripts. She said she sould look into organizing something.

Web Function Wish List

Les worked with Pat and Tony to generate a wish list of Web functions that may be fruitful to explore for SLAC use. The list is available at: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/slac/www/wwwtech/working/wish-jun97.html. Les said that initially we want to identify all possible items, then we will go onto prioritise and figure of what resources may be needed. The requests for additions should be sent to Les Cottrell with a cc: to WWW-Tech.

New Plug in for Telnet Support

Bebo talked about a White Pine plug in that does a terminal emulation in the browser. This allows one to get round problems with browser that do not support a telnet clinet. Since it is a plug in it has to be down loaded onto the machine running the browser. Bill Lockman asked for this support, but now has a work around. Concensus, was that it seems of limited appeal and not anything critical, so assuming Bill is happy then Bebo will remove it.

Les Cottrell