So, this blog gets many hits regarding how to use HTTP(S) and also how to parse JSON. It seems that using Excel as a web service client is quite trendy. The REST Api is an increasingly popular web service paradigm. Excel developers should seriously consider structuring their applications and solutions around a smart client GUI interacting with a middle and data tier sitting behind a web server.
In such an architecture, should we use Microsoft IIS for the web server? Well for developers running a desktop edition of Windows, e.g. Windows 10, the version of IIS is not representative of the version of IIS on a Windows Server edition but then Windows Server costs at least a thousand dollars/pounds/euros. The desktop edition will ALWAYS ship with fewer features which can be very frustrating. And there will ALWAYS be a look and feel difference between developer edition and server edition. In this blog post, we'll explore the open source alternative, Apache.
Installing Apache directly onto Windows is a cinch, the XAMPP technology stack which includes not only Apache but also MariaDB (formerly MySql), PHP and Perl. With XAMPP you even get a nice control panel applet to start and stop your server
However, there are two drawbacks with this configuration. Firstly, if you move from your computer to a web hosting company then you will still need Windows; your hosting company might be puzzled as to why after having accepted Apache you chose Windows and not Linux as the OS. Secondly, one will find that a huge amount of Apache documentation is written for a Unix implementation. At this point I will end this post because the next post shows how to install Linux-like Apache.
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