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Choosing a Threading Mode

The Chili!Soft ASP Servercan run in one of two threading modes: multi-threaded or multi-process. In multi-threaded mode, the ASP Server runs one process that starts multiple threads to handle ASP page requests. In multi-process mode, the ASP Server runs one master process that starts additional processes as needed to handle ASP requests.

You can change the mode by using the Administration Console, as described in "Running in Multi-process Mode" and "Running in Multi-threaded Mode" in this chapter. The mode you should choose depends on your server environment and the ASP application you are running. This topic discusses some of the issues involved in choosing a mode.

Note

Multi-process mode is not available on Linux or Cobalt platforms.

Stability

Running Chili!Soft ASP in multi-process mode generally provides more stability than running it in multi-threaded mode. In multi-threaded mode, a problem with one ASP page can cause problems for all of the users accessing your site. In multi-process mode, a problem with a page or operation affects only one Chili!Soft ASP process; the other processes continue to handle requests normally.

Speed

ASP applications that make heavy use of the Application object perform better when running multi-threaded mode. This is because in multi-threaded mode, the Application object is stored in memory available to all threads of the single Chili!Soft ASP process. In multi-process mode, accessing the Application object requires inter-process communications, which imposes a slight performance hit.

Security

A multi-process Chili!Soft ASP Server runs under the user account inherited from the Web server process that calls the ASP Server. Because of this, you can use file system permissions to limit access by the ASP Server (and an ASP page) to user files, but Chili!Soft ASP configuration files (such as odbc.ini) must be readable by all Web server users.

A multi-threaded Chili!Soft ASP server runs under the user account specified in the casp.cnfg file. This user must have read access to all Chili!Soft ASP configuration files, as well as to all individual ASP pages. You can limit access to Chili!Soft ASP configuration files to the specified account under which the ASP Server runs.

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