Maxscape History

The story of Maxscape began in 1992. It was the time of ISDN, Teletext, and Compuserve. The Internet was almost unknown to the public and even most of my colleagues at SEL Alcatel, besides Siemens the most important producer of telephone switches at that time, don't saw its future.

Anyway, I was fascinated by the idea of connecting people via computer networks. I mean, it is not so difficult to imagine, that after the invention of computers, the next step is to connect these computers and then the people behind them.

At first, I set up a telephone relay station, so that people could dial into the server to connect to each other. Fortunately, I had a friend, the best enginieer I ever met by the name of Werner Bosse from the 'Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR'. He suggested building that station using Internet technologies. Therefore, it was simple to connect the server software to the Internet when the time came to do so.

In 1995, when companies began to realize the advantages of an online presentation, there were literally only a few programmers in that field. So, it was easy to acquire customers and earn a lot of money. Therefore, I made myself self-employed to focus on website and webserver development in 1997.

Quite soon thereafter, I figured out that there was a need for a webserver framework, I named it Web Application Server, to integrate the generic part systems needed to implement a website. At that time, the easiest way was to use Perl, its CPAN modules like CGI, DBD/DBI, FCGI and the Cern or the NSCA, that later became the Apache, HTTP server and a database like e.g. Msql, MySql or Oracal.

Because of the flaws of storing a website's content with all its properties and data on a file system, I decided to store it in a rational database, instead. So, I developed a simple data model depicting the requirements of a website's information structure and the HTML document language and implemented a run-time system to generate the content stored in the database.

Fortunately, I had found out, that Perl can evaluate and execute code stored in a database, making it a native interpreter for HTML with embedded Perl code. This allows for the implementation of a sophisticated template technique to separate the content from the design and the application software.

My most exciting moment was when I succeeded to dynamically generate an HTML page with with embedded Perl variables and function calls stored in the database by the run-time system on-the-fly, for the first time. Well, it took a minute and I thought good idea, but simply to slow with all the data in the database. So, the next day I ask Werner what to do and he told me to index the database tables and then it was perfectly fast.

When the Vereinsbank, one of the first banks with an online presentation, became a Maxscape customer, its web site consisted of about 500 static HTML files with a similar layout all having a menu and a specific page topic. To add a new entry to the menu meant to change all 500 static files, what was not cheap because of the lack of Internet developers in those days. Therefore, I wrote a script that imported the HTML files into the database, then separated the HTML layout from the specific page content by the use of global page templates. And here we are. Instead of changing 500 files, only the template containing the menu needs to be changed to add a new menu entry. That convinced the Vereinsbank to buy a Maxscape license, what was helpful for the Maxscape development for some time.

Storing a website in a database poses the question, how to edit it. Well, there are a lot of tools out there to manage a rational database, but none of them depicted an hierarchical view on a web site's information structure comfortably. At first, I even edited a database's dump what is obviously quite uncomfortabe. So, I began to develop an application server with a web browser surface to ease the content management what is a task on its own.

Release 0.01

Release 0.01 was really beta, nevertheless, it implemented some of the basic ideas and features. It combined an HTTP server (Cern, NCSA), the PERL interpreter with CPAN modules, a webserver run-time system based on a library and the text-based web browser Lynx.

Release 0.02

In early 1995, Maxscape 0.02 was the first release combining an HTTPD (NCSA), a database (Msql), the PERL interpreter with CPAN modules and the Maxscape WebServer library. It was successfully applied to an Internet database project (SIRADOS/AUM GmbH) on an NT operating system, and used as the web application server of the HypoVereinsbank, one of the earlier banks in Germany to offer online services, running on Solaris with an Oracle database, in 1997.

Release 0.10

The release 0.10 code base originated in November 1996 from scratch, using the release 0.10 scripts and the experience collected in several projects since the summer of 1995. It was the first release based on the NCSA HTTPD, the Msql or the Oracle database, the PERL interpreter with CPAN modules and the Maxscape WebServer library and run-time system.

Releases 0.10 to 1.00 were running from 1997 until 2000 on several customer websites (Vereinsbank Internet Server, T-Data Intranet Server, Phase 4, GMH, etc.). These releases proved the speed, robustness and stability of the basic components, as well as the Maxscape library and run-time system.

Release 0.90

With Maxscape 0.90, released in December 1998, a step towards a more generic webserver environment was taken. The distribution solved a lot of problems, especially with respect to installation issues, but important features were still missing. This release was built on the Apache HTTPD, the Msql, the Mysql or the Oracle database, the Perl interpreter with CPAN modules, as well as the Maxscape WebServer library and run-time system.

Release 1.00

Maxscape 1.00 started in May 1999. The Apache was used and the default database became Mysql. A standardized directory structure for the application servers, the run-time and development software were implemented. Many new features were added to the browser-based administration surface, as well as to the Maxscape application programming interface. This release was running on the Vereinsbank's website until winter 2001.

Release 1.01

In 1999, the latest versions of the Apache HTTPD and the MySQL database were integrated into the server platform. The Maxscape server API has been worked out, especially in respect to database tables and HTML form handling.

Also in 1999, I decided to quit all customer relations and to stop selling Maxscape for several reasons. Anyway, I have been developing it until today.

At that time, I was fascinated by the idea of a profile community website, now known as social media. One does not need to have too much imagination, as the first step was the invention of the (personal) computer, the next was to connect these computers via the Internet and finally, connect the computer users comfortably.

Consequently I began to develop a communication website with comments, messages forums and hosted it on my Internet server at Maxscape.com.

I could not agree with my business partners Phase 4 from Munich on a business concept for a company, there were no investors in Germany for such a project, the Indian companies were more interessted to aquire paided customer projects although they had plenty of money and I was not willing to publish Maxscape to avoid the burden to support users with an incomplete prototype under development.

Anyway, after over 30 years being in the software business, I just wanted to make music, relax and make voyages. However, between 2000 and 2006 I developed a prototype of a 'social media' web site from time to time and pubished it at Strinx.com. It is still running without further changes.

Release 2.00

With release 2.00 (2016–2017), I updated the server platform (Perl, CPAN packages, Apache, Mysql, etc.) and added new features, like integrated profile and website management parts and components.

Release 3.00

As of august 2026, I am quite a bit content with Maxscape for the first time surprisingly. During the years I have rewritten the webserver platform (Perl, Apache, ...) and its buid with RPM. I updated the Maxscape application servers (e.g. Maxscape.com, Sound-Basement.com) and switched from Apache to the Maxdaemon HTTP (maxdaemon.org) on my Internet server.

So, after 34 years of development Maxscape has become quite a system. My source directories of Maxscape and Maxdaemon have about 350000 files and it needs a 1TB disk for everthing. The Maxdaemon library has about 47 Perl packages with 38384 and the Maxscape library has 74 packages with 70352 lines of Perl code. With all the configuration files, the shell and perl scripts, the daemons, the HTML and (parsed) Perl content in the content database, I estimate Maxscape/Maxdaemon consists of about 1000000 lines of code without Perl CPAN packages and other third party software.

The term "large-scale software" is quite subjective, but maintaining and distributing 1000000 lines of code typically requires a skilled team. Fortunatly, I had the experiance at the SEL/Acaltel integration group where we integrated the software for mobile network management systems of about 300 developers, the Perl language isn't verbose like C or Java and the Maxscape development, distribution, managment and operation tools eases the maintainance and operation, so I can do it on may own without to much effort.

All in all, I have the feeling that there is not much more that I can do, as my daily output had become small compared to the size of the project. Maybe one thing left to do, publishing the whole thing publicly.