Jeffrey Horner
Embedding R within the Apache Web Server: What's the Use?
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The Apache web server is robust, scalable, and extensible. It is by
far one of the most well-known, widely used and tested Open Source
projects. With the 2.0 release came a powerful, enhanced module API
that includes managing all stages of an HTTP request, an API for
programming multi-processing modules (MPM), and new infrastructure
to support serving multiple protocols, not just HTTP. Many
popular scripting/interpreted languages such as Perl, Python,
Ruby, and PHP have been implemented as Apache modules with great
success. Applications utilizing these modules can be classified in
two ways: those that serve dynamic content to web browsers, and those
that serve dynamic content to other applications, e.g. web services.
         This paper discusses the use of embedding R within
the Apache web server. I will show how R users utilize the embedded R
interpreter to create useful applications, both for web browsers and
as web services. Further, I will compare this approach with other R
projects involved in networked interfaces to R.