OpenACS on Windows : AOLserver Modules : Table Info

Please email me if you have information you would like added to this table. In addition to the fields below, I would like information on the AOLserver versions and platforms a module has been tested on, and who the current maintainer is, if any.

There is some overlap between this page and the Wiki's list of AOLserver Contributed Software. Some modules that aren't in this table yet: http://dqd.com/~mayoff/aolserver/, http://www.theashergroup.com/download/

Type Filter Function Filter Status Filter Windows Filter
Module v Type  Function  Status  Win32  Comments 
PHP   Unknown     Programming Language     Unknown     Unknown   See this OpenACS thread for links to OpenForce's documentation on building PHP for AOLserver courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
Tcl Thread Extension   Generic TCL extension     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   This implements nice thread-abstraction, has C-level threadpools, an objectified nsv replacement and some other goodies. It complements the AOLserver offering for the Tcl (thread) programmer and is more advanced in some cases.

Can be compiled as both stock Tcl-extension or as AOLserver module (--with-aolserver). It is part of the Tcl project on SF. I'm currently on 2.5 version and this one supports 3.x series. I'm going to make a 2.5.1 release shortly which will support 4.x servers as well.

(Contributed by Zoran Vasiljevic)
ThreadTrace   Unknown     Unknown     Beta     Unknown   A package performing alternative Tcl interp initialization based on Tcl command traces and Tcl unknown mechanism. During some internal testing got memory footprint of the server less than 1/3 and thread startup time for about 50 times better than with the current AS approach. The package will be part of the upcoming Tcl threading extension 2.6 but can be employed as stand-alone package for AS 4.0+.
XOTcl   Generic TCL extension     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   This is OO-extension to Tcl, much more powerful than (more widely known) incrTcl. It allows you to write complex libraries with great code reuse. It is also much better suited to Tcl idea (dynamic) than incrTcl, which is more leaned to C++.

It can be compiled as an AOLserver module (--with-aolserver) for the 3.x series (up to the 1.0.0 release) and is "package require"-savvy for 4.0 and later for versions 1.0.2+.

(Contributed by Zoran Vasiljevic)
ablite   Other     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Apache benchmark lite. It is actually a stand-alone executable and not a module. Look around the internet before using the AOLserver distribution, since I know there are newer versions.
ns_pam   AOLserver-specific C     Unknown     Beta     Unknown   This module provides PAM support for AOLserver. It allows you to create a PAM Domain and authenticate users. See this announcement for more information.
ns_pkg   AOLserver-specific TCL     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Provides dynamic package loading and storing.
nsadmin   AOLserver-specific TCL     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Requires AOLserver 3.x and PostgreSQL 6.4 - 7.02? Features include live online database administration, online viewing of server and access logs, and more.
nsberkeleydb   AOLserver-specific C     Database Driver     Unknown     Unknown   A database driver for BerkeleyDB by Vlad Seryakov.
nsbinarysupport   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Adds ns_returnbinary and ns_writebinary. See the OpenACS bboard for some more details.
nsblowfish   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Allows you to do blowfish encryption of strings within AOLserver. It only works on regular strings, and it returns a string with the encrypted results hex-coded. Has been tested on Linux and Solaris. Since nsencrypt supports blowfish and many other algorithms, this will probably not be ported to Win32.
nscache   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Production     Works  
nscgi   AOLserver-specific C     Unknown     Core     Works  
nschartdir   Unknown     Library Interface     Unknown     Unknown   An interface to ChartDirector from advsofteng.com, a sophisticated charting library for C++.
nsclamav   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   There is a Windows port of ClamAV but it appears to be Cygwin based.
nscp   AOLserver-specific C     Unknown     Core     Works   With AOLserver 4, nsd can be loaded into tclsh, which is a better way of testing many functions.
nsdav   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Beta     Unknown   Currently in Alpha, planned to be a complete implementation of WebDAV for AOLserver 3.4 & 4.0. Based on the Apache WebDAV code? Also see a pure TCL version (also beta) in the nswebdav directory of the AOLserver SourceForge repository.
nsdigest   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   An Access Control / Permissions Module, should be compatible with nsperm
nsdns   AOLserver-specific C     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   A simple server and DNS proxy in one, it serves its own records and forwards everything else to a remote DNS server. All replies are cached locally.
nsdqe   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Multiple utilities, including
  • dqeAsync - async multithreaded communication
  • dqeCache - two-level Tcl_Obj based cache'ing
  • dqeChan - channel transfer between threads
  • dqeEnc - Unicode and encoding handling
  • dqeParser - allows Tcl based ADP parser
  • dqePcount - simple page hit counter
  • dqeSess - a cookie-based session mechanism
  • dqeStat - Tcl based command statistics
  • dqeUtils - misc utility commands
  • dqeVh - name-based virtualhosting and filtering support
  • dqeVhStd - standard operations for vhosting and filtering
nsencrypt   AOLserver-specific C     Library Interface     Unknown     Works   Strong RSA private/public key cryptography. Support for AES, Blowfish, Cast5, IDEA and Triple DES ciphers. Uses OpenSSL.
nsexample   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Production     Works   A "Hello World" AOLserver module
nsexpat   Unknown     Library Interface     Unknown     Compiles   Interface to Expat, an XML parser
nsfreetds   Unknown     Database Driver     Beta     Unknown   nsfreetds is an internal database driver that uses FreeTDS, a free implemention of the TDS client/server protocol that is used by Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase. There is currently no stable release of the nsfreetds driver. FreeTDS does build on Windows.
nsftp   Unknown     Unknown     Old     Unknown   Deprecated, considered ugly and a security problem?
nsfts   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   AOLserver interface to OpenFTS (Open Source Full Text Search engine), an advanced PostgreSQL-based search engine
nsgd   AOLserver-specific C     Library Interface     Unknown     Works   Interface to http://www.boutell.com/gd/ - a library for dynamically creating images.
nsgdc   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Implements interface to the GDChart library. By Vlad Seryakov.
nsgraph   Unknown     Unknown     Dead     Unknown   NSGraph is a graphing and charting module for AOLserver written in C, C++, and TCL. It is in a very early alpha state. It uses X11 libraries, so it would not be a trivial port to Win32. Definitely not supported and definitely not in a usable state.
nsibasepd   Unknown     Database Driver     Unknown     Unknown   An external proxy daemon for use with the Interbase RDBMS
nsimage   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Beta     Works   ns_image can detect the type and size of GIF, JPEG, and PNG files. It replaces ns_gifsize and ns_jpegsize and creates new ns_pngsize and ns_image commands. It seems to work for GIFs and PNGs, see bug #685055 on SF for a ns_jpegsize patch.
nsimap   AOLserver-specific C     Library Interface     Unknown     Compiles   Implements IMAP4 interface. Based on the UW IMAP c-client library from http://www.washington.edu/imap/. It allows AOLserver to act as an IMAP client. Was previously named nsmail.
nsinformix   Unknown     Database Driver     Unknown     Unknown   Allows AOLserver to acccess an Informix DB. It is an internal driver - there is an external driver included but it is known not to work. Paul Cannon (pik at debian.org) is the current maintainer.
nsisapi_extension   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown  
nsisapi_filter   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown  
nsjabber   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown  
nsjava   Unknown     Programming Language     Unknown     Unknown   Thread on OpenACS bboard about nsjava status
nsjk2   Unknown     Unknown     Beta     Unknown   nsjk2 integrates generic Java Servlet and Java Server Page functions with ability to filter HTTP requests in AOLserver, route them to Tomcat, and route Tcl evaluation calls from Java to Tcl interpreters that live within AOLserver connection threads.

The source code has been submitted to the Jakarta Community for acceptance into the Jakarta core.

Full documentation can be found here: http://www.aolserver.com/docs/nsjk2.pdf

Completely replaces nstomcat. Tested with Linux and Solaris.
nsldap   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown  
nslog   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Core     Works  
nsmysql   Unknown     Database Driver     Unknown     Compiles   A MySQL database driver. According to the release notes, it has been successfully compiled and tested under
  • AOLserver 3.0 RC1, MySQL 3.22.30, under Windows 98.
  • AOLserver 3.0, MySQL 3.22.30, under Windows 98.
  • AOLserver 3.3.0, MySQL 3.23.34a, under Windows 98 SE.
The tests were done using AOLserver on Windows 98 SE connecting to a MySQL database running under Linux using the winclients-3.23.14 MySQL 3.23.14 Win32 client binaries.

I don't use MySQL but I was able to get the module to compile against my AOLserver 4 and MySQL 3.23.51 in just a few minutes. The only changes I made were to change #include <ns.h> to #include <nsdb.h> and to use a project file based on the ones I've done for the other modules.
nsnss   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   This module utilizes two packages from Mozilla.org: NSPR and NSS. NSPR is a portability library that provides I/O, thread, string, memory management and other operations to make cross-platform portability easier. NSS is a security library that utilizes the NSPR portability layer. Both of these libraries are used extensively in Netscape server products as well as the Mozilla browser.

Based heavily on nsopenssl. Not available as a download yet, get from CVS.
nsocaml   AOLserver-specific C     Programming Language     Unknown     Unknown   Implements an OCaml interpreter inside AOLServer. By Vlad Seryakov.
nsodbc   Unknown     Database Driver     Unknown     Works   Tested with SQL Server on Win32, works
nsopenssl   AOLserver-specific C     Library Interface     Production     Works   AOLserver 4 requires nsopenssl 3.x
nsoracle   AOLserver-specific C     Database Driver     Production     Works   I haven't personally used it on Windows, but others have successfully.
nspasswd   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Unknown     Works   Provides the ns_passwd command which can do CRYPT, MD5, SMD5, SHA, and SSHA. Good for use with LDAP directories. On Windows uses DES_crypt() from OpenSSL.
nsperl   AOLserver-specific C     Programming Language     Unknown     Unknown   The perl-aol project attempts to merge perl and AOLserver such that AOLserver can call perl scripts which can directly use the AOLserver API functions and data structures.
nsperm   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Core     Works  
nspool   AOLserver-specific TCL     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Implements pools of socket connections, files, and tclshells. Requires the dqd_utils module. (It is using the dqd_attachfile and dqd_detachfile functions). Features: auto checking connection status, auto reopens lost connections.
nspostgres   AOLserver-specific C     Database Driver     Production     Works  
nsprofile   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Compiles  
nsreturnz   AOLserver-specific C     Unknown     Production     Works   gzip compression by Jim Wilcoxson. Needs an update for i18n? See this site for a fork with some other changes.
nsrewrite   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Unknown     Compiles   A very simple Arsdigita module that adds the ns_rewriteurl command. Now available in SourceForge CVS with new documentation.
nsroaming   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   http://www.sateh.com/software/ Adds support to AOLServer for Netscape Roaming Profiles. It works by dedicating a configurable part of your webspace to store the profiles. Each user has a directory in which the profile files will be stored.
nsruby   Unknown     Programming Language     Dead     Unknown   SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/nsruby/) lists as pre-alpha status on all platforms. The homepage notes, "let this die!!".
nssavi   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Interface to Sophos Anti-virus library
nsscheme   Unknown     Programming Language     Unknown     Unknown   Scheme embedded in AOLserver
nssession   Unknown     Unknown     Beta     Unknown   Implements a session management API for AOLServer. This is the 'hackers release'.
nssha1   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Production     Works  
nssmartvh   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Works   By Wojciech Kocjan. Module (C+TCL) for name-based virtualhosting on AOLserver. Uses TCL for domain-path conversion and Ns_Cache functions for speeding things up. Tim Moss reports that it works on Win32.
nssml   Unknown     Programming Language     Production     Unknown   SMLserver is an SML module for AOLserver. SMLserver supports webserver interpretation of bytecode files compiled with the ML Kit. Both ML Server Pages and plain sml-files, using an SML interface to the AOLserver API, are supported.
nssnmp   Unknown     Library Interface     Unknown     Unknown   Implements SNMP v1,v2c and some primitive MIB support. It is based on the SNMP++ library from http://www.agentpp.com/. It allows you to use AOLserver as a SNMP trap server and build SNMP monitoring packages.
nssoap   Unknown     Unknown     Dead     Unknown   NSSOAP is an implementation of a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) client and server that works under AOLserver. Aparently uses nsexpat and a module called nstcldom that is in the nssoap sources. According to one website (http://www.advogato.org/person/tdxdave/), development on nssoap has stopped but TclSOAP (http://tclsoap.sourceforge.net/) might work with AOLserver. Definitely not supported and definitely not in a usable state.
nssock   AOLserver-specific C     Self-contained     Core     Works  
nssolid   Unknown     Database Driver     Unknown     Unknown   SOLID ODBC driver, similar to ODBC, but for Unix? Database driver
nssqllite   AOLserver-specific C     Database Driver     Beta     Unknown   SQLite driver. In beta, written by Wojciech Kocjan.
nsssl   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Possible that support may be discontinued in favor of nsopenssl.
nssybpd   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Sybase driver, to be linked with Sybase stuff
nstelemetry   AOLserver-specific TCL     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   I believe this is being replaced with a more comprehensive "stats" package in AOLserver.
nstest   Other     Unknown     Unknown     Works   Not really a module, but a set of perl scripts for automated testing. Needs minor modifications. I began creating some extra tests, but haven't pursued this because we are looking at alternate testing frameworks.
nsthreadpool   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Creates a pool of threads for applications that require much thread creation / deletion
nstomcat   Unknown     Unknown     Old     Unknown   Replaced completely by nsjk2. Scott Goodwin was maintaining it. Only works with Tomcat 3.x.
nsunixodbc   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   By Tom Jackson, adapted from the nssolid driver.
nsvhr   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Compiles   Available from AOLserver CVS on SourceForge.
nsvirthost   Unknown     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   The beginnings of a virtual hosting front end for AOLserver.
nsxml   AOLserver-specific C     Library Interface     Production     Works   Note: Newest version does NOT work with VC++ because it uses a gcc extension.
nsxmlrpc   AOLserver-specific TCL     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   Implements XML-RPC (Remote Procedure Calls)
nszlib   AOLserver-specific C     Library Interface     Unknown     Unknown   Implements Zlib interface, allows compressing/uncompressing Tcl strings as well as gzip file support. Not listed on downloads, get from CVS. By Vlad Seryakov.
pywx   Unknown     Programming Language     Unknown     Unknown   Allows the interpretation of Python scripts within the AOLserver process
tDOM   Generic TCL extension     Unknown     Unknown     Unknown   This is a very compact and fast XML, DOM, XPath and XSLT processor with a nice Tcl API. A nice feature: it allows you to share DOM trees between threads. In one of the future releases, it will also cache complex XLST transformations in shared memory which is geared towards high-performace server-side XSLT processing. It also has a very handy way of building any kind of DOM trees using Tcl commands (not using Tcl append!).

It can be compiled as AOLserver modules (--with-aolserver) for the 3.x series (up to the 0.7.5 release) and is "package require"-savvy for 4.0 and later with 0.7.6 release (will be done in couple of days).

(Contributed by Zoran Vasiljevic)