COP3832  Section 01
Advanced Web Server Communication
Spring 2001

Homework Grading Policy
Each assignment		0 to 20 points
Exams and Assignments
	Exam 1	Exam 2	Homework
% of Grade	30%	40%	30%
Dates	Wednesday, 10/10	Monday, 12/10 1530-1800	Various
Texts
CGI Programming with Perl, Second Edition; Guelich, Gundavaram, Birnieks; O'Reilly, 2000, Second Edition
Learning Perl; Schwartz & Christiansen, O'Reilly 1997, Second Edition
On-line References
HTML Reference
Apache Reference
PERL Reference
Room and Time
GL-166 MW 1530-1645

Attendance I recommend that you attend every class. Those who attend class have a better chance of passing the course.

Prerequisites COP2210 or equivalent course, CGS3559 or equivalent kowledge.

Late Assignment Policy Assignments are due at the START of class. You lose 1 point off the grade for every 6 hours. You may hand in a nassignment up to 1 week late, I will start the grading for very late assignments at 10 points (50%).

Working Together on Assignments is NOT ALLOWED. There is a large difference between discussing general aspects of the course and discussing specific aspects of an assignment. Do not discuss your solution of a problem with others. Assignments that are too similar will not be graded. With a second occurrence, you will earn an F in the course.

Things you should already know

• How to use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to upload files
• How to use Telnet to connect to a remote computer
• A programming language: C, C++, Java, or Pascal. Please note that Visual Basic is probably not enough of a background for this course
• How to use a web browser
• How to use email

Course Content - Sections I and II will be covered fairly quickly. The bulk of the course will be on Sections III and IV.

1. Getting started- UNIX, HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (3-4 lectures)

   • UNIX commands.
   • Solix and JCCL accounts
   • Configuring solix to display your home page.
   • Creating Hypertext Documents - HTML, character styles, paragraph styles, lists, images, tables, hypertext links.
   • Cascading Style Sheets
   • HTML Reference
   • CSS 1 Reference
   • CSS 2 Reference

2. Learning a scripting language - Perl (3-4 lectures)

   • Scalar Data
   • Arrays and List Data
   • Control Structures
   • Hashes
   • Basic I/O
   • Regular Expressions
   • Functions
   • Filehandles
   • PERL Reference

3. Static server control - Configuring a web server (4-5 lectures)

   • TCP/IP, IP addresses, Domain Names, MIME, Daemons
   • The Hypertext Transfer Protocol
   • Creating a Web site on mongoose
   • Configuring and starting a server
   • Access controls, Log files
   • Aliases, Scripting, Log Files, Connection Types, Negotiation, Indexes
   • Apache Reference

4. Dynamic server side scripting - PERL and SSI (12-15 lectures)

   • CGI interface
   • Forms and CGI
   • CGI.pm
   • SSI
   • Security
   • Sending Email
   • Perl Process Management
   • Perl User Database Manipulation
   • Data Persistance
   • Maintaining State

In a nutshell, you will learn about both sides of the web - the browser side and the server side. The browser side is partially covered in the Intro to the Internet prerequisite: HTML. You will learn some more HTML. On the server side, you will learn how to configure a web server. You will run your own copy of a web server and investigate the how to restrict access to your server. You will also learn a programming language that is similar to C++ that runs on the server. Through the use of a programming language that runs from the server, you will be able to have your web pages interact with the user.