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    24 February 2004                  Jeffrey W. Baker <jwbaker@acm.org>    

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DESCRIPTION
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This is Apache::Session 1.6

These modules provide persistent storage for arbitrary data, in arbitrary
backing stores.  The details of interacting with the backing store are
abstracted to make all backing stores behave alike.  The programmer simply
interacts with a tied hash.

Apache::Session is Copyright (c) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004  Jeffrey William
Baker <jwbaker@acm.org>.  Distribute under the same terms as Perl itself.

Apache::Session is Copyright (c) 2004 Casey West, <casey@geeknest.com>.
Disribute under the same terms as Perl itself.

PREREQUISITES
-------------

No particular modules are required, but most of Apache::Session's functions
require Digest::MD5 and Storable.

If you wish to use the DBI backing stores, you need the latest version of DBI
and the driver for your database.  Currently MySQL, Postgres, and Oracle are
supported.

INSTALLATION
------------

tar -xvzf Apache-Session-1.6.tar.gz
cd Apache-Session-1.6
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

Substitute "nmake" for "make" above if you are using Windows.

EXAMPLE
-------

See eg/example.perl.  This program is intended to be run under mod_perl.

AUTHORS
-------

Jeffrey Baker <jwbaker@acm.org> is the author of 
Apache::Session.

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa <miyagawa@bulknews.net> is the author of 
Generate::ModUniqueID and Generate::ModUsertrack

Erik Rantapaa <rantapaa@fanbuzz.com> found errors in both Lock::File
and Store::File

Bart Schaefer <schaefer@zanshin.com> notified me of a bug in 
Lock::File.

Chris Winters <cwinters@intes.net> contributed the Sybase code.

Michael Schout <mschout@gkg.net> fixed a commit policy bug in 1.51.

Andreas J. Koenig <andreas.koenig@anima.de> contributed valuable CPAN
advice and also Apache::Session::Tree and Apache::Session::Counted.

Gerald Richter <richter@ecos.de> had the idea for a tied hash interface
and provided the initial code for it.  He also uses Apache::Session in
his Embperl module and is the author of Apache::Session::Embperl

Jochen Wiedmann <joe@ipsoft.de> contributed patches for bugs and
improved performance.

Steve Shreeve <shreeve@uci.edu> squashed a bug in 0.99.0 whereby
a cleared hash or deleted key failed to set the modified bit.

Peter Kaas <Peter.Kaas@lunatech.com> sent quite a bit of feedback
with ideas for interface improvements.

Randy Harmon <rjharmon@uptimecomputers.com> contributed the original
storage-independent object interface with input from:

  Bavo De Ridder <bavo@ace.ulyssis.student.kuleuven.ac.be>
  Jules Bean <jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk>
  Lincoln Stein <lstein@cshl.org>
  
Scott McWhirter <scott@surreytech.co.uk> contributed verbose error messages for
file locking.

Corris Randall <corris@line6.net> gave us the option to use any table name in
the MySQL store.

Oliver Maul <oliver.maul@ixos.de> updated the Sybase modules

Innumerable users sent a patch for the reversed file age test in the file
locking module.

Mike Langen <mike.langen@tamedia.ch> contributed Informix modules.

FURTHER INFORMATION:
--------------------

Apache   by Apache Group    comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix
                            http://www.apache.org/
                            
mod_perl by Doug MacEachern modperl@apache.org
                            http://perl.apache.org/