- AOLserver - A free, Tcl-enabled, multi threaded, powerful web server that is behind huge sites such as aol.com and digitalcity.com. AOLserver is also a complete web development platform being designed from start to have efficient access to databases. We support version AOLserver 3.
(Note: ArsDigita and Robert Thau came up with a mod_aolserver for the Apache web server, which intends to replicate the AOLserver API on Apache. It is in beta quality and will have, IMHO, severe performance issues when compared to AOLserver, but Apache fans can use it. http://apache.arsdigita-dev.com)
- PostgreSQL - A free, powerful SQL92-based Relational Database Management System with advanced features including Multi-variant Concurrency Control (unlike in the more common table-locking model, readers don't wait for writers and writers don't wait for readers, very crucial in a high-volume web server environment). Version 7 is the supported version.
- Some flavor of UNIX or Windows. Our development is almost entirely done on GNU/Linux (and when not done in GNU/Linux, it is tested on it) and for now, this is the only operating system we can help you with. Some very big web sites run on GNU/Linux and it has proven itself as a great platform for web servers, plus it is free software. Red Hat Linux and Debian GNU/Linux are the reference distributions for AOLserver and OpenACS, but if you know what you are doing, you can use any GNU/Linux distribution (and many people do). In fact, Debian GNU/Linux has OpenACS .deb packages all ready to install. Very nice. Thanks to Brent Fulgham for providing the Debian packages. RPM packages are coming shortly. AOLserver now runs on Windows, and so does PostgreSQL, so if you want to do it, go ahead (refer to the PostgreSQL and AOLserver installation docs if you want to use OpenACS on a Windows environment. The OpenACS installation should be the same in Windows, except for .tar.gz files).
- The PostgreSQL driver for AOLserver, available at http://openacs.org/sdm.
- The OpenACS distribution, available at http://openacs.org/sdm.