[[What is an application server?]] ---- [ulis], 2002-07-11 An application server is a server which service is to launch applications? ---- What kind of applications? How is an application server different than a shell, or a cron program, or any of the other ways that one can start an application? ---- [ulis], 2003-08-21 Like a shell or a cron program, an application server can deliver services around an application. But an application server has a manageable database of applications and can spread applications' execution across a network, sending back the result of the execution to the caller. It seems easy to design an application server for Tcl scripts: * a database server to manage and deliver the scripts, * an execution server for each node to route the calls, launch a script and send back the result. I've seen such a server (for binary applications) in the 80's. ---- james garrison (Qualcomm) - Aug 21, 2003 Interesting, we have developed a 3-Tier architected system (all in Tcl) where we have a thin client residing on the desktop that contacts a Service Provider Server and requests a application, from which the Service Provider will deliver the files to the client and the client runs the application... The application's components (scripts, images, libraries, etc.) are stored and managed in a database (called a framework). We even provide the user with multiple environments (production, test, and development) to try out the application early in the design phase. Each application (if required) contacts the Service Provider for services (database access, upload/download files, etc.), so the client does not need to have ODBC, Oracle, etc. to be installed or configured. ---- [TclHttpd] is an application server for Tcl. It is a web server that is easily extended by adding Tcl code to it. You have the freedom to implement whatever semantics you want for the URL space it implements. As one example, its "direct URL" feature maps a URL onto a Tcl Procedure call, and maps the CGI form values onto the procedure's parameters. The resulting page is simply whatever the return value of the procedure is. No muss, no fuss. There are many other ways to extend the server, and you can use it as a vanilla web server as well. It is worth noting that you can easily embed TclHttpd inside some other application. This flips around the traditional relationship of Apache and its plugins/CGI. Instead of having a big complex web server that you plug into, you have a simple, lightwight web server you can hook into your existing application to get a web interface to it. [Brent Welch] Aug 26, 2003 ---- [ulis], 2003-08-25 I think that TclHttpf is not an application server but a traditional server: it executes scripts onto the server, not the client. An application server sends the script to the client where the script is executed. In turn, the script can ask the server or the client to execute some service and so balance the resources load between the client and the server. But it's true that a HTML page can contain code that is executed on the client side... ---- [Category Glossary] | [category internet]