What is Apache, is it an operating system?

Open source programs are very popular with upcoming business and also for desktop computers for personal use. Many professionals however, get easily disoriented when it comes to choose among different options available and they start thinking whether the product they are downloading or buying a combined CD/DVD containing many programs matches their requirement or not.

Operating system is commonly sought because it is the platform on which number of programs are installed and used. Operating system is necessary to make use of the computer efficiencies. It acts as an interface through which the user interacts with the program, provides the input, press button or pass commands and get the desired output.

Is apache an operating system? Among the choices that are available, people often get confused and think that Apache is an operating system, which is very contrary to its objective. Before we could delve on what Apache exactly is, I should provide you some information on the general term ‘server’ associated with it.

To pass information on the Internet and Intranet, there are number of programs required to pass information smoothly. The architecture, which enables this, involves computers and network. The client is a computer program which requests information using the network services. The server checks the database for the information sought and provides the required feedback back to the client. The server does not contain information in itself but there are some servlets programs, which enable to store information on it. The server makes it possible to transmit the information requested in an Internet protocol standard that is understandable on the network. For example, if one person understands English and the other knows only French, then the server acts as the translator to communicate the information from one to other in suitable format. So, apache operating system is a myth.

Apache is a HTTP web server not an operating system, which means that it uses HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to transfer the information requested on the web. A web server first accepts the request comes from a client via HTTP, then checks its local database and sends back the desired output back to the client via HTTP. The information is then suitably rendered to the browser, which the client could see, download or get printed as desired.

The Apache HTTP Server is a free web server program available from Apache.org contrary to Linux, which is mistaken as apache operating system. Along with many other free software programs such as MySQL which can act as back-end database repository, it also works well to support any website, web application and web program. Apache works for any kind of operating system that includes Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, Solaris, OS/2, TPF, Novell NetWare and Free BSD for 32 and 64-bit processor types of Intel and AMD processors. Its httpd.conf file that is provided along with the user manual can be configured very easily to operate along with MySQL and also supports a number of open source languages such as PHP, perl, Javascript.

It could work well with files of any types such as ‘*.phtml’, ‘*.php’, ‘*.html’, and ’.phps’. It could be easily installed by following the step-by-step procedure given in an installation wizard. You will be required to set a username and a password for it. The default user name is root. For security reasons, it is essential that you set a password. When installed, you will see a blank black window after choosing ‘test the configuration’ from the start menu, Apache group -> test the configuration command in Windows. It is practically very easy to run and see the different configured scripts such as PHP executing on the browser and thus can add various functionalities to the website, such as sending the entered text in any form to the server to read the script file.

Since it is a free web server program, so you can always get an updated version available online. Many distributing channels are available from where you can get the updated version. Most of the newly introduced programming languages are also pointed back to the link and providing free access to the Apache HTTP Web Server.