This document contains information to give you an idea of where and more importantly, how mod_perl is being used. If you have an interesting mod_perl application, let us know about it!
Of course, the sites described on this page are not the only sites running mod_perl. Since mod_perl inserts its name and version into Apache's Server header, we are able to see others based on the Netcraft survey results.
Also remember that many services are using mod_perl as their back-end, therefore these aren't reported by Netcraft, since the back-ends are usually cannot be accessed by the Netcraft scanner. For the same reason, if you try to verify whether some of the services listed here are running mod_perl, you may not be ablet to, because the back-end is not accessible. The listing is made of reports from people who develop and maintain these services, so they know.
In addition to the sites listed in this document, you might also be interested in the sites running Embperl, Apache::ASP, AxKit and Mason, which are all application toolkits/servers running under mod_perl.
The first public site to run mod_perl: PAUSE, the Perl Authors Upload SErver. This was a birthday present given to PAUSE by Andreas König on August 20, 1996.
Do you like movies? Then take a look at how Rob Hartill uses mod_perl to help you find out anything and everything there is to know about movies at the Internet Movie Database . Besides using mod_perl to speed up the interactive database queries, mod_perl steps in during the first stage of a request, mapping URIs to cached query results if present and mapping based on language preference if the user has presented one.
Webpersonals site uses
HTML::Embperl over mod_perl to drive this nice match
making site.
Conceptionstore.com's ovulation calendar runs on HTML::Embperl over mod_perl.
Hammernode Internet a no-cost DNS provider serving thousands of zones, uses mod_perl to power both its dynamic web site, as well as the server end of its published API interface for client programs. We're very satisfied with mod_perl, and very thankful for it.
Scandinavia Online AS uses mod_perl for the Kvasir search engine. Kvasir is Norway's most popular Internet directory.
Alvar Freude uses mod_perl on http://www.a-blast.org/. It is a
"truly interactive text network", written completely in mod_perl. For
a quick, non-technical overview have a look on http://www.assoziations-blaster.de/prixars/.
(its in english on our old domain).
About one year ago, it runs on
M$ IIS with ActivePerl and some PHP, in the meantime it is completely
rewritten as Apache module, using MySQL as database. With this, I
speed up the execution time from ~3 Seconds to ~10 milliseconds for
each Blast-Page (OK, OK, the old machine had a very worst hardware,
now we use only a semi-worst one: Pentium II 350, 320 MB RAM with
Soft-RAID 0 under Linux).
The blast_engine includes the links into the texts in realtime, also
the statistics are created in realtime:
http://www.a-blast.org/statistics/,
http://www.assoziations-blaster.de/statistik/
(german, with much more traffic)
The blaster uses the speed benefit of keeping the complete keyword
list in memory (more then 5 MB for the german version), for the
non-linear real-time linker I use a ~50 line regexp .-) The HTML-Files
are compressed on-the-fly with Compress::Zlib, so we keep bandwidth
(and transmission time to the users) small.
CitySearch.com -- is providing online city guides for more than 100 cities worldwide, citysearch.com helps people find and plan what they want to do and then lets them take action, offering local transactions such as buying event tickets and making hotel and restaurant reservations online. Its traffic exceeds 100,000,000 page views a month. Of course it's running under mod_perl. PerlMonth is a site completely driven by mod_perl/mySQL. Every article is stored in the database. When a user makes a request, a module we wrote parses the uri and dynamically creates the html page for the user. It's nothing out of the ordinary but it helps maintain the overall site with ease. PerlMonth does about 100K Pageviews/month w/o breaking a sweat. The site is written and maintaned by Baiju Thakkar.
singlesheaven.com is a match
maker site, that is written completely in Perl and is being driven by
Apache/mod_perl and mysql. Each request comprises a big number of
database queries to make the site very interactive, and it's still
very fast under mod_perl. The service runs under
Apache::Registry module. The site is written and
maintained by Stas Bekman.
Gerald Richter and ECOS are using mod_perl (with Embperl) for a picture database. This contains pictures from touristic information Rheinland-Pfalz. It's intented as press information, to reduce the need of sending photographs around. You can view and search the picture via the internet or via a direct dial-in. The download is only available for vaild users and via direct dial-in. Also it's possible to maintain the database via the web and insert new picture and descriptions, change or delete them. Software running is Apache 1.3, mod_perl, Embperl, DBI, DBD-Pg, Postgress 6.21 on an Linux 2.0.34.
Jayme Cox explains: At Broderbund Software, we have a site running mod_perl to keep persistant database connections open between our Apache web farm and our Oracle database server. We have a game site that checks our Oracle DB for a customers email address and lets them download additional game maps if they have registered the software. Using persistant DB connections increased the perceived response time by over 200%. The exact URL is http://www.warlords3.com/guild/maps.
Rick Mangi and Thaumaturgix, Inc. use mod_perl to provide a method for gathering stats on web usage including a logging proxy server module for their customers.
Jason Bodnar at Cox Interactive Media, explains:
Right now we're using mod_perl for authentication on two sites (soon
to be a third):
http://www.Austin360.com
and
http://www.GoBig12.com.
We started out using Netscape servers and dbms for authentication. We
were writing all our demographic info to flat files but that got out
of hand so we moved the demo info to Informix. This was okay but it
meant keeping two seperate databases (dbms or Berkely DB with
username/password and Informix with demographics). Not fun. So when we
switched to Apache (for performance reasons) I was able to consolidate
all the info and do authentication out of Informix thanks to mod_perl,
Apache::DBI, Apache::AuthenDBI and DBD::Informix. It makes life much
simpler! We're also eventually going to be running our Eats Database
(list over 1400 restaurants in Austin) and our movie database with
mod_perl. I'm sure we'll find alot more uses for it in the future.
Magirus Datentechnik GmbH is a German company employing around 200 people. Magirus has offices located in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and needs a powerful Intranet System for it's internal information flows. We're using mod_perl to do it. Our mod_perl applications make the link between 5 different database systems (Perl power and mod_perl permanent database connections) to allow users to get price-lists, make offers and orders, get the status of a client, etc. A principle advantage of this kind of configuration is that we only need to install a Web Browser on the user's side. These tools are available from both Intranet or secured Internet connection. Without mod_perl, the average response time for the top 5 applications is between 3 and 9 seconds. This is unacceptable to our end-users. With mod_perl, the response time seems (for the end-user) to be immediate (depending of the client's speed). This is only working on a private-network and so we can't give you an address to try it. For more information, contact Philippe.Froidevaux@magirus.com.
Tony Bowden developed The Music Database which uses mod_perl and MySQL to allow browsing and searching a cross-referenced guide to over 80,000 CDs and one million songs. (not operational at this stage).
Randy Ray uses Apache+mod_perl for his Software Configuration Management team's site within U S WEST IT. About 1/3 of the data the server sends out is CGI-generated. After the conversion to mod_perl, some existing CGI scripts running unchanged via Apache::Registry showed measurable speed increases of as much as 723%. All of the SCM CGI scripts use the Image::Size library to add HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes to <IMG> tags. As Image::Size caches the dimensions of each files as it is first read, the persistent dataspace will virtually eliminate the step of computing image sizes.
ArtToday has a collection of over 600,000 keyworded images of all types. Customers find images using keyword and category searches. They serve about 250,000 raw hits daily. Information about the collection persists in an Oracle 7 database, and keyword searches happen via a custom application written using a Verity search engine. All of this is glued together using Perl. Our hardware consists of a single Sun Ultra with lots of storage (about 150GB) and an unnecessarily large monitor. We switched to Apache/mod_perl after becoming frustrated with Netscape Commerce Server performance. Although I don't have hard numbers, I would estimate a factor of 2-5 times CGI performance. Using mod_perl and Apache we've turned our "extremely loaded" server into a "comfortably loaded" server, even allowing us room for some software development. Mod_perl saved us from having to buy another Ultra!
mod_perl scripts which search the archives of CPAN, CTAN, Linux, teTeX (a Unix TeX system), and MuPAD (a symbolic math program) are available at theory.uwinnipeg.ca. These scripts query an mSQL database via various criteria, and employ the CPAN multiplexer code to choose a nearby mirror of the archive, if available and desired.
PBS Online is using mod_perl to improve the speed of its heavily loaded servers, having replaced CGI for games, navigation control, and commerce.
O'Reilly and Associates uses mod_perl to control access to their online books site. Every request for a document runs through a mod_perl script, which checks username and password, and may eventually provide dynamic data.
WIRED Digital uses mod_perl (on linux and solaris) for several applications. On HotBot mod_perl is used for the HotBot mail and HotBot homepages application, interfacing with a third-party application by WhoWhere. It is also used widely throughout HotWired, Wired News, Webmonkey and Suck.com as a replacement for CGI scripts, and to control the HotWired member pages. Mod_perl also runs two servers that redirect requests for external pages from within WIRED sites. WIRED Digital regards mod_perl as an important and highly valuable addition to the server development toolset, and will continue to consider mod_perl as a strong candidate for solutions.
MediMatch uses Apache and Stronghold on Solaris, and makes use of mod_perl almost exclusively for its medical employment services database. Originally coded to use standard CGI, when we switched over to mod_perl to maintain persistent connections to a Sybase database, and for data caching in various fashions, we saw a speedup ranging from 25-500% (varying on the type and depth of the search queries). We also use mod_perl to facilitate the caching of CGI-parsed HTML pages, which reduced the speed of requests to approximately that of ordinary static HTML.
CMPnet www.cmpnet.com, a technology information network, uses mod_perl to generate 70% of its pages - over half a million hits a day. Our network includes TechWeb www.techweb.com, a technology news site, and FileMine www.filemine.com, a shareware site. We switched to mod_perl because we couldn't stand writing and debugging NSAPI code for Netscape servers anymore. Needless to say the productivity improvement was immeasurable. Recently our company evaluated several top commercial web publishing platforms (Vignette's StoryServer, INSO's DynaBase) for a possible switchover. But in the end we stayed with our mod_perl architecture and agreed to standardize our company's internet operations on it!
Mark A. Downing tells us: I have been running an Amateur Radio callsign database (with 800k records) on my web page for nearly two years, originally with WebSQL. But due to the lack of portability, I rewrote my scripts using sybperl. Now with mod_perl, I have successfully cut the time to complete a lookup from nearly 5 seconds to under 1 second (It takes longer to display the data than to do the query). This was accomplished by creating persistant database connections (to sybase) using mod_perl, and Apache is now able to establish those connections upon startup. No longer do I have to wait for my original scripts to connect and gather data.
Rob Malda tells us that Slashdot.org - "News for Nerds", is a combination of Perl and MySQL. Slashdot runs under mod_perl which keeps things nice and speedy.
Mojam is a new Internet music media company with the goal of attracting the largest audience of music listeners and players anywhere. Mojam is different that RollingStone or MTV because it focuses on helping new bands get their music out to the listeners by posting their show dates, music clips, and news releases. mojam.com is 100% Apache mod_perl running Mason to dynamically deliver all of it's pages.