Mod_plsql's History

In the other day I found out a post in asktom with the history of mod_plsql.
I present here the relevante bits only changing the format, link info and making clear that the "I" in the text is Tom Kyte.

In the beginning there was this thing called the "WOW gateway" (Web Oracle Web). It was a cgi-bin that crudely translated a url into a stored procedure call (didn't use bind variables!!! that is why I (Tom Kyte) call it "crude").... It was written originally by Magnus Lonnroth of Sweeden.

This became OWA (Oracle Web Agent) in version 1 of OIS (the Oracle Internet Server). It too was a cgi-bin.

Later, with version 2 of OWS (OIS -> OWS, the Oracle Web Server), this OWA became a "cartridge" in OWS speak. Like a module for Apache but ran in the spyglass mosaic webserver (which is what we used).

At that time, some guy named -- oh wait, that was me (Tom Kyte) -- wrote this thing called OWAREPL (historically archived here:
http://asktom.oracle.com/~tkyte/owarepl/doc/ (link not working)

It greatly extended the capabilities of OWA giving it file upload/download, db authentication and many of the features you take for granted in mod_plsql today.

We are now at OWAS version 3.0 (Oracle Web Application Server)....

Then, came along this thing called "webdb" (our group wrote that initially). We wanted a smaller footprint then OWAS for simple installs so we took the OWAREPL code and built a small lightweight listener around it - this was the webdb listener. It did http and "owa" functionality.

Then, OAS (Oracle Application Server) v4.0 came out -- they had been incorporating many of the ideas of OWAREPL into their OWA but differently (file upload and download for example is "there" in OWA but done very very differently then either OWAREPL or webdb)....

Flash forward a bit -- spyglass goes away, cartridges go with it -- it is now 9iAS using apache.
The decision was made to use the webdb functionality in mod_plsql -- the code was "merged" if you will. So, OWA+OWAREPL+webdb -> mod_plsql, with owarepl/webdb (which was really owarepl written in the Oracle coding standard instead of "toms standard") being the predominant theme.

And from his blog

Once upon a time ago, I wrote a utility called "OWAREPL" - it was the OWA Replacement "cartridge". I wrote it for OWS 2.0 (Oracle Web Server 2.0 - which came right after OIS 1.0 (Oracle Internet Server) and right before OWS 2.1.1, OWAS (Oracle Web Application Server) 3.0, OAS (Oracle Application Server) 4.0 and then AS (just Application Server) now... So, this was about 10 years ago (it later became the foundation for the webdb lightweight listener and then mod_plsql).