4D WebSTAR Server Suite V is overall three times faster than Apache, according to WebSTAR’s developer. 4D WebSTAR Server Suite V is a commercially available Web, database and file sharing software package designed for the Mac, and Apache is the popular open-source Web server included with Mac OS X.
The news comes from a white paper published on WebSTAR’s Web site entitled 4D WebSTAR 5.1: Performance Advantages . The paper itself was authored by CJ Holmes, 4D WebSTAR director of engineering. (Look for it under the Documentation heading on the Web page above — it’s a 0.9MB StuffIt-compressed archive containing an Adobe Acrobat PDF file and the test files used to determine the performance differences).
Holmes pitted 4D WebSTAR 5.1 against Apache 1.3.20, the version pre-installed with Mac OS X 10.1.2. Both servers were hosted on a Dual Processor 450MHz Power Mac G4 connected to a network using 100baseT. Three single-processor Power Mac G4s were used as clients, and they too were connected using 100baseT — hardware configurations that 4D WebSTAR felt were reflective of real-world conditions, rather than best-case scenarios.
The test itself attempted to simulated a real-world Web server too, according to Holmes. It consisted mainly of the transfer of small graphics, HTML files and the occasional index file request — 85 percent of the entire load. The remaining 15 percent were dynamic requests for directory listings, PHP and search queries.
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