Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 16:27:39 +0300 (EEST)
From: Henri Bergius <Henri.Bergius@iki.fi>
Subject: MWS for 15th of September, 1999 (#16)
To: midgard@greywolves.org, lwn@lwn.net, chris@linuxdev.net, deb@linuxchix.org

Greetings!

This has been a busy week in the Midgard
world. We had another stable release, and work 
on some important new features (like the 
packaging system and DAV support) has started.

Jukka's work with the package format is
the first step towards the new ODBC-enabled 
branch in Midgard development, and we look
forward to getting the next major version
out in October.

Meanwhile, the documentation front is still
lagging a bit behind the development. We have
got some new volunteers, and some nice 
contributions to the function reference, but
otherwise things in that area are a bit on
hold until we get more time to work on it.

============================
----------------------------

Current versions:
	Stable: 1.2.2 (Mad King)
	Devel.: 1.3

----------------------------
============================

Midgard 1.2.2 released

Jukka Zitting released the latest version
of the 1.2 'Mad King' series earlier today.

The new version contains some bug fixes, better
error reporting on known installation problems,
and the support for replies to articles.

We hope that the improved error reporting system
will help new users to get their Midgard servers
more easily over the initialization phase.

You'll find the release from Midgard's Web site
in source form, and binaries will also hopefully
become available soon.

  -> http://www.midgard-project.org/download

----------------------------

Midgard Bug Reporting

We now have the Bugzilla system implemented
for bug tracking, and it is recommended that
users report any possible problems to it.

The Bugzilla system will be familiar to all
who have participated in Mozilla.org's bug
reporting efforts, and documentation can
be found quite easily from Mozilla's site.

Problems with the Midgard Web site can also
be reported with the system.

You can find Midgard's bugzilla at:

  -> http://bugs.midgard-project.org/
  
----------------------------

Big deployment FAQs

Recently we have received lots of email from
organizations evaluating Midgard to use in big
deployments. Most of them have been interested
in the same things about the system, and have
had quite same questions. As the Midgard FAQ
hasn't been updated for some time now, I decided
to list some of those questions here.

Most of them seem to be interested in Midgard's
reliability. As Midgard is relatively new product
(in its public form), the concern is quite 
understandable. However, we've been running some 
big sites with it for a long time now, and have 
encountered no stability problems with Midgard 
itself. Operating Systems and other components 
can be another matter, of course.

Scalability is a matter we haven't much tested 
ourselves, as all Midgard sites we run work quite
nicely without any special server arrangements. But
of course there will be situations where balancing 
the load to multiple servers will be needed. Midgard 
has no special features or requirements in this area,
so normal tricks of scaling Apache and MySQL up apply.

Another question we hear lots about is the ability
to use Midgard on different platforms. In its current
form Midgard should work on almost any UNIX platform
where Apache, PHP and MySQL run on. We don't have 
currently the developer resources needed for porting
Midgard to other Operating Systems (like Windows NT) 
or Web servers (like Roxen or IIS), but will certainly
not rule out those as future possibilities if there
is enough interest.

And then there is the patched PHP. This is something
we hear a lot of. People are interested on why we chose
to patch the PHP module and not use the standard one.
The answer is simple: Because we had to. Some Midgard
functionalities require the enhanced language scanner our
patch provides, and that cannot yet be included into
the standard PHP code tree. Jukka wrote on this to
the list lately, so people interested in the situation
with PHP can read it from the archives:

  -> http://www.progressive-comp.com/Lists/?l=midgard&m=93738955300365&w=2
  
============================
============================

About Midgard

Midgard is a freely-available Web application 
development and publishing platform based on 
the popular PHP scripting language. It is an 
Open Source development project, giving you the 
freedom to create your solutions in an open 
environment. Midgard is the tool for creating, 
modifying and maintaining dynamic 
database-enabled web services.

  -> http://www.midgard-project.org

----------------------------

About MWS

The Midgard Weekly Summary is a newsletter 
for the Midgard user and developer community.

The MWS is currently being distributed in
following mediums:

 -The Midgard Project's Web site
   -> http://www.midgard-project.org

 -Linux Weekly News
   -> http://www.lwn.net

 -Linux Developer's Network
   -> http://linuxdev.net

 -Open Source Writers Group
   -> http://www.thepuffingroup.com/oswg

 -Midgard mailing list

If you would like to release it elsewhere,
please contact Henri Bergius 
(Henri.Bergius@iki.fi).

Previous issues of Midgard Weekly Summary can 
be found archived at the Midgard web site.
  -> http://www.midgard-project.org/topic/169.html

============================

/Bergie

-- 
-- Henri Bergius -- +358 40 525 1334 -- Henri.Bergius@iki.fi --
               http://www.iki.fi/Henri.Bergius