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Considering the large volume of hours I have put into customizing the Board for my business website,the following was a shock. Comments?
As some may be aware, one of our IIS servers crashed thisafternoon and the cause was determined to be due to an access violation produced by the PHP engine. Over 750 domains were affected by this outage.
Although this particular outage was short in nature we are extremely concerned about the culprit (PHP) and have determined it is best for all that we make a formal statement regarding the use of these two software packages.
While PHP and MYSQL may represent good quality alternatives to using SQL-7 and ASP, both PHP and MYSQL have been released in the public domain without any type of support or warranty thus leaving no recourse for users should this software malfunction in any way. For those of you who are not technical it is extemely important to understand that both these "system" programs run with privileges equal to those of the operating system and thus have "rights" to control the server just as other software in its class does. The operating system of the server affords no protection from the code executed by these programs, which can cause the unexpected crash of
the service we experienced today or other abnormalities.
Since PHP and MYSQL are essentially "free" and some designers have requested to use these packages we will continue to make them available unless we determine they are adversly affecting the normal operation of our systems and services. While we do up-charge for use of SQL-7 (a licensed product with support) we do not charge for the use of PHP and MYSQL. With that said please be advised of the following:
(1) St. Louis Internet, Inc. (STLI) offers PHP and MYSQL on a voluntary basis and makes no comittment to offer PHP and MYSQL on an ongoing basis for any purpose.
(2) STLI may remove (either temporarily or permanently) PHP and/or MYSQL if, at its sole discretion, one or both of these software packages is causing network or system interference.
(3) Designers using these products do so at their own risk and STLI shall not be responsible for any loss of data, downtime, revenues or the like should one or both of these products malfunction, be turned off, removed or made otherwise unavailable.
(4) Unlike SQL-7 databases, which are backed up once per day and retained for 4 weeks, we attempt to back up MYSQL databases during our normal data backup procecedure, however, since MYSQL offers no management interface which includes an automatic management backup interface module we cannot guarantee that any MYSQL file will be backed up if it is open for use at the time our backup cycles run. Users should take measures to backup their own MYSQL data files.
(5) Debugging, problem solving and the like which are requested by customers will be invoiced at $120 per hour on these two products plus telephone/FAX charges (if needed to communicate with vendors) since we have no technical support, warranty or the like as we have with conventional
products which are paid for and licensed.
(6) All developers and users of these two products use same at their sole risk.
(7) Effective this date there is a $50 setup fee per MYSQL database but no monthly charge. There
is no charge for the use of PHP code, however, the designer is requested to ask for such extensions at the time the web site is initially setup.
While STLI supports "open-source" software such as PHP/MYSQL we want our customers to understand such software is typically not of the caliber and quality of other products which are paid for and licensed; thus we will support these products as best we can given the resources available for the benefit of our customers.
Should you have any questions regarding these two products and our support/position please do
not hesitate to contact us at: [email protected]
Sincerely,
St. Louis Internet, Inc.
636-458-2866
FAX: 314-215-4162
As some may be aware, one of our IIS servers crashed thisafternoon and the cause was determined to be due to an access violation produced by the PHP engine. Over 750 domains were affected by this outage.
Although this particular outage was short in nature we are extremely concerned about the culprit (PHP) and have determined it is best for all that we make a formal statement regarding the use of these two software packages.
While PHP and MYSQL may represent good quality alternatives to using SQL-7 and ASP, both PHP and MYSQL have been released in the public domain without any type of support or warranty thus leaving no recourse for users should this software malfunction in any way. For those of you who are not technical it is extemely important to understand that both these "system" programs run with privileges equal to those of the operating system and thus have "rights" to control the server just as other software in its class does. The operating system of the server affords no protection from the code executed by these programs, which can cause the unexpected crash of
the service we experienced today or other abnormalities.
Since PHP and MYSQL are essentially "free" and some designers have requested to use these packages we will continue to make them available unless we determine they are adversly affecting the normal operation of our systems and services. While we do up-charge for use of SQL-7 (a licensed product with support) we do not charge for the use of PHP and MYSQL. With that said please be advised of the following:
(1) St. Louis Internet, Inc. (STLI) offers PHP and MYSQL on a voluntary basis and makes no comittment to offer PHP and MYSQL on an ongoing basis for any purpose.
(2) STLI may remove (either temporarily or permanently) PHP and/or MYSQL if, at its sole discretion, one or both of these software packages is causing network or system interference.
(3) Designers using these products do so at their own risk and STLI shall not be responsible for any loss of data, downtime, revenues or the like should one or both of these products malfunction, be turned off, removed or made otherwise unavailable.
(4) Unlike SQL-7 databases, which are backed up once per day and retained for 4 weeks, we attempt to back up MYSQL databases during our normal data backup procecedure, however, since MYSQL offers no management interface which includes an automatic management backup interface module we cannot guarantee that any MYSQL file will be backed up if it is open for use at the time our backup cycles run. Users should take measures to backup their own MYSQL data files.
(5) Debugging, problem solving and the like which are requested by customers will be invoiced at $120 per hour on these two products plus telephone/FAX charges (if needed to communicate with vendors) since we have no technical support, warranty or the like as we have with conventional
products which are paid for and licensed.
(6) All developers and users of these two products use same at their sole risk.
(7) Effective this date there is a $50 setup fee per MYSQL database but no monthly charge. There
is no charge for the use of PHP code, however, the designer is requested to ask for such extensions at the time the web site is initially setup.
While STLI supports "open-source" software such as PHP/MYSQL we want our customers to understand such software is typically not of the caliber and quality of other products which are paid for and licensed; thus we will support these products as best we can given the resources available for the benefit of our customers.
Should you have any questions regarding these two products and our support/position please do
not hesitate to contact us at: [email protected]
Sincerely,
St. Louis Internet, Inc.
636-458-2866
FAX: 314-215-4162
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