Total Modern Mod_perl Page 2

Also, mod_perl allows you to configure your Apache server and handlers in
Perl (using the PerlSetVar directive and the
sections). This makes the administration of servers with many virtual hosts and
complex configuration a piece of cake. Hey, you can even define your own
configuration directives!

How Fast and Stable is mod_perl?

Many people ask, “How much of a performance improvement does mod_perl
give?” Well, it all depends on what you are doing with mod_perl–and possibly
whom you ask. Developers report speed boosts from 200 percent to 2000 percent.
The best way to measure is to try it and see for yourself (see
http://perl.apache.org/tidbits.html
and http://perl.apache.org/stories/ for
the facts).

Every second of every day, thousands of Web sites all over the world are
using mod_perl to serve hundreds of thousands of Web pages. Apache and mod_perl
are some of the best-tested programs ever written. Of course they are
continually being developed and improved, but you do not have to work on the
bleeding edge of development–you can use the stable products for your sites
and let others do the testing of the new versions for you.

I want to show you just a few of the many very busy and popular sites that
are driven by mod_perl. A thousand words can’t substitute the experience. Visit
the sites and feel the difference. They will persuade you that mod_perl rules!

• ValueClick
  serves more than 70 million requests per day from about 20 machines. Every
  response is dynamic, with all sorts of calculation, storing, logging, counting,
  you name it. All of their application programming is done in Perl.

• Singles Heaven
  is a Match Maker site with almost 26,000 members and growing. The site is
  driven by mod_perl, DBI, Apache::DBI (which provides a persistence
  to database connections) and MySQL. The speed is enormous, chatting with
  mod_perl is a pleasure. Every page is generated by about 10 SQL queries, for it
  does many dynamic checks on every page–like checking for new emails, users who
  are watched by various watchdogs and many more. You don’t feel these queries
  are actually happening, the speed is as fast as the “Hello World”
  script.
  Enter
  as anonymous user to try it.

• Internet Movie
  Database serves around two million page views per day. All
  database lookups are handled inside Apache via mod_perl. Each request also goes
  through several mod_perl handlers and the output is then reformatted on the fly
  with mod_perl SSI to embed advertising banners and give different views of the
  site depending on the hostname used.

• Deja.com serves
  about 160 million page views per month. It’s uses a cluster of mod_perl enabled
  Apache servers running on the Linux operating system.

• MP3.com served 142
  million page views to 560,000 individual visitors in April 2000.

How Many Sites are Running a
mod_perl-Enabled Apache Web Server?

According to the Netcraft survey, as of May 2000 nine
million hosts are running the free Apache Web server, which is more than 60 percent of
all survey hosts.