Analyze X-Powered-By Header for Server/Triplestore-Software

[akahl]

In larger deployment scenarios, often the triplestore is not exposed directly to the web. And sometimes it is not possible to override Apache's Server-Header. Therefore I would recommend also taking a look at the X-Powered-By Header. In our case this is more informative than the Server Header:
curl -I http://lod.b3kat.de/sparql
Server: Apache
...
X-Powered-By: Bigdata http://www.bigdata.com

[VladimirAlexiev]

Where is that header specified?
"I can't override the standards-specified header" seems like a poor excuse.

[akahl]

The Server Header cannot be changed for only one vhost in a deployment with dozens of vhosts. Specifiying the X-Powered-By header can be done in any directive.
This about the simplicity of implementation: We cannot deploy a dedicated webserver instance just to make it deliver a special Server header. And I think you are interested in correct statistics - so why not analyze more than one header? I am trying to help you.

[VladimirAlexiev]

@akahl : The question is how popular is this header. Can you provide some pointers?

[akahl]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Common_non-standard_response_fields

[rvesse]

I think the problem will be that for most servers the X-Powered-By will still report something uninteresting like ASP.Net/4.0 or PHP/5.4.0

[VladimirAlexiev]

@rvesse But the same problem holds of the Server header. Until recently all our installations said just "nginx" and "apache", nothing about our software :-) This is a problem of the server maker/deployer, not of the header