Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and DVD supports all major desktop operating systems (including Windows 98 through Vista, Mac OS X version 10.2 for PPC and Intel CPUs, and Linux Redhat 7.3) even without any OS updates installed. Our main implementation goal is to provide the same behaviors and the same set of features on all supported platforms. This is possible since SAWS is based on the Apache codebase (that is implemented in portable C). Advanced utilities used in preparing all environment and configuration files and the starting SAWS is implemented in the Perl programming language that is also available on a lot of platforms.

The wrapper auto detects free ports, finds the appropriate extensions and libraries to use on a given version of the OS, copies database files, starts MySql or Firebird database server, generates php configuration and apache-style configuration files for the codes, starts the core web server, opens the browser, and manages the shutdown of the web and database servers.

A lot of efforts were required to hide the internal implementation details of Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD from the developer and user on Windows 9x.

Stunnix Advanced Web Server uses codebase of Apache - very advanced, very flexible and the most widespread web server in the world. The syntax of configuration files and set of supported configuration file directives is exactly the same as Apache web server has.

Http core of Stunnix Advanced Web Server supports loading additional modules compiled for Apache-1.3.33 and below, meaning support for features absent in default configuration of Stunnix Advanced Web Server can be added in a minutes, such as webdav, ssl support, authentification via database and others.

Since all Apache configuration settings are supported and are handled the way Apache does, it automatically means that one can apply different settings to any single directory or to any resource whoose url matches specific regular expression; has the ability to have aliases for some documents (possibly located outside of web content root), has ability to have version of the webpage or images in several languages, advanced rewrites, advanced initialization of environment variables, precise control over headers and mime types and other features that make Apache so flexible and powerfull.

The CDBuilder for Stunnix Advanced Web Server is an advanced tool that lets developers configure all the properties of the CD using GUI, without ever touching any configuration files or using command line utilities. It creates a directory tree ready to be burned to a CDROM or copied to a USB memory stick. It can also create ISO images of the final product, using correct ISO creation settings that guarantee proper work on all operating systems.

You can see what options are available by visiting the "Site Settings" page of our on-site demo of CDBuilder.

Just create a project, specify the location of the web content and database files, choose which platforms to support, choose which scripting languages to enable and which extensions to enable in the scripts, select a database type to be used, and click "Make Prototype" and "Copy all files" to generate a working image of your compact disk!

Tomcat, ASP, and ASP.NET based sites appear on the same port as the main web server, allowing it to mix Tomcat, ASP, and PHP or Perl on the same portal seamlessly. Developers can specify which content is to be served by the main web server and which content is to be served by Tomcat. You can view more information on running Tomcat from CDROM with Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CDs and DVD by clicking here.

Of course, Tomcat, ASP and ASP.NET shut down along other parts of the web site (such as the database server) when the user requests to stop the web site.

Developers can save a lot of time otherwise spent on site development and debugging by enabling the Web Server Inspector - a tool that lets them to browse MySQL database, inspect web server access and error logs, and environment variables, open various special folders with a single click, and restart their web server or control their database server.

This allows the developer to run their web site under Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and DVD and to modify it at the same time, being able to trace what is going on and reset the state of the scripting engines.

No installation is required for Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD. It runs from any location, including directories with names containing spaces. The web server, database server and script interpreters are run directly off of the CD. No hidden installation is performed on the user's computer. Everything needed to run them is present on the CD, and the user doesn't have to preinstall anything on his or her computer - no .NET runtimes, no OS patches.

Of course, it works fine from read-only media like compact discs (CDs), DVD disks, USB sticks, and shared network drives.

A smart wrapper, used for starting browser-based applications automatically, tunes the environment and computes the command line options for the database servers, generates configuration files for script engines, and then successfully runs the web server.

Information about the location of various important files and directories (like the interpreter's location, and directories of web documents), server properties (port being listened to by web server and so on), and information about the environment that the site runs in is made available via scripts that constitute web site logic. This makes it easy to adapt the web site logic to work on any of the supported platforms.

The user can copy an entire CD's contents to an HDD in order to free-up the CD tray for other discs and to improve performance.

Since Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD is based on the Apache codebase, the world's most flexible, advanced, and widespread web server, it directly (or indirectly - by use of apache modules built for original apache!) supports all of the standards one can ever need. Of course, it supports Server-Parsed documents (also known as SSI), fully compliant to Apache's handling of them (and is much more advanced than MS IIS).

Classic CGI protocol for the execution of CGI scripts written in any language (even in compiled ones like C++) is also fully supported. The input to the scripts and the output they can produce can have arbitrarily large sizes due to the advanced implementation of dynamic pages support.

PATH_INFO, a very useful feature for implementing virtual directories, is, of course, also fully supported.

Keep-alive connections are also supported, meaning greater performance for pages that have a lot of graphic elements on each page or for pages that serve multimedia elements.

Since Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD-ROM and DVD-ROM media is based on the Apache codebase, PHP scripts are executed via mod_php, Perl scripts are executed via mod perl, and Python scripts are executed via mod_python. This means that the interpreter for each particular language is always present in the address space of the web server process, so when requests for dynamic pages arrives, there is no need to load and initialize the interpreter.

As a result, the request is processed in the fastest way possible, resulting in a 10 times greater performance improvement for some of the scripts.

In case plain CGI support is needed, mod_php, mod_python and mod_perl support CGI emulation.

An IonCube Loader is shipped with Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD/DVD media and is supported on all platforms that Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CDs/DVDs supports. This means you can distribute even your business-critical web site PHP code on CDROMs without any worries about code theft, or about whether or not CDROMs will be supported on various platforms.

The loader for Zend-encoded code is also provided for all platforms that Zend supports (which includes every platform Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and DVD discs supports besides Mac OS X for Intel CPUs) - meaning that IonCube is preferred if you wish your product to support as much platforms as possible.

Of course JavaScript code protected by Stunnix JavaScript Obfuscator and Perl code protected by Stunnix Perl Obfuscator are both supported on all platforms supported by Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and DVD disks.

Apache is famous for its flexibility. Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and DVD is as flexible as Apache web server since its native configuration file syntax and grammar is the same as the one used by Apache.

For example, it has the ability to set options on a per-location or URLs-matching-regex basis and has parts of configuration files residing in its web documents directory.

Conditional configuration is, of course, supported (based on request properties, environment variables set, and the browser's language). The inclusion of various configuration files is supported.

URL rewriting is fully supported too. Custom error pages (localized into different languages) are also supported.

If-Modified-Since HTTP header is also supported, allowing you to use your browser's cache for static resources to speed up page rendering.

There is an advanced cross-platform support for the stopping of Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and for the releasing of media. It's triggered by visiting a page with a special URL (refer to it with a link or button with a "quit" title). Once it's visited, Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD-ROM will serve content for a specified number of seconds (to allow that resource to refer to images, stylesheets, scripts, and even multimedia), terminate itself, database server, Tomcat (if any), and other external programs started per the developer's request, and will then release the media.

It's important to remind the user to click that button or visit the link for stopping, since on platforms other than Windows, the user won't be unable to eject CDROM by simply closing browser window.

The tray icon shown on Windows brings up a context menu with the option to stop the web site, so Window users can use the tray icon instead of visiting the special resources.

Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and DVD and all scripts and programs that are started by it are terminated automatically without any GUI prompt when the user ends the session or reboots/shutdowns the machine on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.

Cross-platform support is available for starting additional programs with configurable delays (before and after starting the browser or before starting the http engine) and for stopping them when the server shuts down.

Of course, the starting of the browser can also be disabled, so products that use database-driven web services that draw their UI theirself can also use Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CDs and DVDs.

The names of those additional programs can be set for each platform independently. It's even possible to have a web-based UI on some platforms and an native UI on others. All additional programs are run directly from the CDROM and are stopped automatically once the web server receives the request to terminate. It's possible to specify the amount of time to wait after a such additional program is started.

All autoconfigurations and autodetections are done by a special smart wrapper utility implemented in Perl (meaning it's very easy to be modified for special needs).

As part of the startup, it finds a free TCP ports to start the web server, database servers, and Tomcat on, meaning that even on computers that have the "most convenient" port numbers occupied by other applications (or even by other instances of Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD), all servers will start successfully. The chosen port numbers are exported to web site scripts using environment variables and (for mysql server) as settings in php.ini.

Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and DVD media has support for Portable Firefox. If enabled, portable Firefox will run as a browser when you run the CDROM.

Portable FireFox is currently only supported on Windows, but we plan to add support for Mac OS X in the next releases of Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD.

Portable Firefox is stored in .zip form on CD, is unzipped (without any visual indication) to a hidden directory on HDD, and is run from there on the first and all subsequent runs. Portable Firefox will not disturb any other running copy of a FireFox or Mozilla-based browser.

FireFox configuration files are updated each time to reflect the port web server currently running. This means you don't have to hardcode the port number that the web server will listen on and pray that it will be free for use on all the computers that your CDRom with web server is run on. On the other hand, all updates that the user makes to their Firefox settings will be preserved since the configuration file for Firefox will be updated, and not simply reset.

The configuration of the portable Firefox that is shipped with Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and DVD media has automatic updates disabled, so you can be sure that it won't download any updates from the Internet or that it won't open any windows stating that a newer version is available.

The user has the option to provide a .zip archive of his or her custom settings and plugins. The .zip file is extracted to the directory where the portable Firefox is silently copied to.

Different instances of Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CDROM and USB media can run on any given computer at any given moment in time, provided the authors of the products have created different Site IDs for their products.

This means that products that rely on Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CDROM and USB media can be run on terminal servers or can be run by the same user at the same time without conflicting with each other.

Much of the added value that Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CDROM and DVDROM media provides is implemented in Perl code. It's a smart wrapper utility for tuning the configuration at upon startup of the web site. Since the utility is coded in Perl programming language (an interpreted programming language), it is very easy to extend it or to alter its behavior.

In fact, as much functionality as possible was coded in Perl. E.g. showing tray icons and its menu on Windows is also implemented into Perl, resulting in the very easy addition of new menu items or the altering of its behavior.

We can add new features easily, and it would be rather inexpensive. We can also add support for new programming languages or architectures with ease too - just contact us.

Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD and DVD-ROM media provides some information about platforms and environments being run under to the web site scripts using environment variables

This allows you to make website scripts that work on any OS supported by SAWS.

Current web technologies allow you to create advanced presentations and product catalogs - either in Web 2.0 style or with the use of Flash.

Most back ends of modern web technologies are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, so it's an ideal and cheap way to create multi-platform products. Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CDROM and USB media is the only product that allows you to create media with web back ends and front ends that will work on these desktop platforms.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of users who have very slow or very expensive internet connections, even nowadays. Why would you limit the interactive capabilities of your web site materials (or create a specialized lo-fi version of the content) for those users? Just let them order current snapshots of your public web site pages on CDs for a couple of bucks (or let them download a big file once over a fast connection somewhere for free!) Just use Stunnix Advanced Web Server for DVD and USB media for this and users of Windows, Macs, or even Linux will be happy browsing your interactive tours, product presentations, and catalogues.

In case you don't have enough staff on hand to create such snapshots, we can do it for you. Just contact us and we'll help you. We can prepare the template of the product for you, and you'll be able to use it to create snapshots of your site as often as you need them.

Today's web technologies are very advanced and cross-platform, but on the other hand, the development of cross-platform web applications is 2-10 times cheaper than the development of the "usual" application for a single platform. The only problem with today's advanced web technologies is that they require complex configurations of the operating system, updating it with the latest patches and setting it up and configuring it to work with various web and database servers.

Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CD-ROM and USB media eliminates the need to setup and configure anything completely! Applications produced with Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CDs will run from any folder or disk and on any desktop operating system. Stunnix Advanced Web Server for DVDs and USB media performs all the configurations for the web server, database server, and scripting engines upon startup.

With the use of Stunnix Advanced Web Server for CDROM and USB media, applications can be turned into multi-user (networked) applications in a single click inside CDBuilder GUI. This means an entire family or small office can share the data on a web-based application.

Have you ever needed to show current version of the website that you are developing to your customer in their office? Just use Stunnix Advanced Web Server for DVD and USB media and you'll be able to take your site with you, and show it to your customers on their computers no matter what OS they may be running. If you develop your site on Linux and one or more of your customers has only Windows installed on their computers, it will not be a problem for you. Simply copy a single folder to the USB memory stick or a CDRW and take it with you. It won't matter which drive letter gets assigned to that media. Stunnix Advanced Web Server for DVD and USB will auto tune everything once it's started.

Make changes at your customer's office, take the USB memory stick with you, and then copy the folder to your computer - and you've just synchronized it with your development environment!

Stunnix Advanced Web Server for DVD-ROMS and USB sticks can be your development web server of choice. Don't waste your time configuring the web server and database server on your development computer - just use Stunnix Advanced Web Server for removable media since it does not require any manual configurations or setup procedures.

You will have your own database and web server that you will be able to reconfigure, start, stop, or restart at your will. If you have to work on different unconnected computers during your day (especially if one of them runs Windows, another is a Mac, and the third one is running Linux), the move from one computer to another will only require the copying of a single folder.