occwserv: An occam Web-Server
-----------------------------

F.R.M. Barnes


This paper presents `occwserv', the occam web-server.  This is a highly
concurrent web-server, written in the occam multi-processing language,
that supports the majority of the HTTP/1.1 protocol.  Dynamic process
and channel creation mechanisms are used to create scalable `server-farms',
each responsible for a particular web-server function -- for example,
reading client requests or running CGI processes.  The design of the
web-server is presented, along with some early performance benchmark
results.

Although performance may appear a limiting factor (when compared to
other web-servers such as Apache), much is gained from the simplicity
and security of occam.  Extending the web-server with new functionality,
for example, is intuitive and largely trivial -- with the guarantees that
code is free from race-hazard and aliasing errors.

An experimental non-standard addition, the OGI (occam Gateway Interface),
is also presented.  This provides a mechanism for dynamically loading
and attaching pre-compiled occam processes to the running web-server,
that can then handle one or multiple client connections.  A text-based
style adventure game is examined briefly, that allows multiple clients
to interact within a `multi-user dungeon' (MUD) style environment.