Sun Microsystems will release a free version of its Java application server next week, a move designed to encourage more developers to build programs on the software foundation.
Sun Bets on Free Java Tool
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is Tomcat a Java application server?
Ah, they’ve woken up. A little too late. But better late than never.
Is this going to be availible for Apple’s Xserve?
I thinks it’s commonly called a servlet engine. Tomcat could be said to be an application server, as it can run webapplications (servlet, jsp). It’s not a full J2EE-server as it only handles servlets and jsp though.
… in the Apache Group for a J2EE Server full complient with the specs.
I think, it is more impoartant, that Sun put theire J2SE under an OpenSoure-license.
OpenSource-projects for Java makes only sense, if the programs run on gcj, kaffe, wonka or an other OpenSource VM, too.
In the other case, we have a OpenSource-project for a proprietary platform (Suns Java).
And whith those OpenSource-programs is it the best to port it to OpenSource-platforms.
J2SE doesn’t need to be open sourced, as the specs are already available for free (last time I checked). If you want to write an open sourced VM that can handle Java 1.4, just implement everything in the spec.
The only licensing comes when you want to call what you’ve written a Java VM, as Java is a tradmark of Sun Microsystems.
The only licensing comes when you want to call what you’ve written a Java VM, as Java is a tradmark of Sun Microsystems.
So essentially one could call their implementation “Coffee VM” and it would alright. If that is the case, why is there are so many people whining and whinging? are these the same people who praise .NET even though Microsoft only has “opensourced” 1/1000th of the .NET Framework and lacks the features which make .NET worth using; winforms, asp.net, ado.net and so forth.
> I thinks it’s commonly called a servlet engine. Tomcat could be said to be an application server, as it can run webapplications (servlet, jsp). It’s not a full J2EE-server as it only handles servlets and jsp though.
What else if there other than JSP and servlets? The third and only thing that I can think of the a plain old Java application which only needs a JRE to run it… I apparently am mis-understanding something here, can someone please explain.
A full J2EE server must also provide support for EJBs, JMS, JCA and many more APIs to be fully complient. Tomcat only provides support for the web teir piece of the application server puzzle.
did anyone read/find out if it’s only sparc or if they’ll include i386 versions or non-solaris versions?
I have done the googling and have found numerous pages at sun.com but I still don’t cleary understand what:
o EJB
o JMS
o JCA
are… could someone explain
EJB – Enterprise JavaBeans
JMS – Java Messaging Service
JCA – Java Connector Architecture
Basically, a J2EE application server acts as a container into which you place your code. This code can be either EJBs, servlets, or JSPs.
The neat thing about an app server is that it provides a lot of functionality that you don’t need to write yourself. It takes care of the communication layer between the client and the appserver, between the appserver and the database, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Unless they’ve up’d the functionality.
Their Sun ONE App Server 7 has been available for free for some time on Solaris, Linux and Windows. Free for development, free for commercial deployment.
It’s bundled with Sol 9.
It’s major limitation is basically lack of clustering, so it will be interesting to find out if they’re releasing that for free as well.
As far as what it does…
Tomcat is a JSP/Servlet container. Basically JSP == PHP/ASP, that is embedded code in HTML pages to create dynamic content for web servers.
Servlets can be likened to things like mod_perl or basic CGI, save that Servlets come with a session management feature (dunno about mod_perl).
In many ways, Tomcat is a “Java Apache” with a different model for extensions, a sophisticated web server.
For a vast amount of applications, JSP/Servlets are more than adequate.
J2EE is more an “Application” server. The concept is that application logic gets embedded into the app server to be made available to clients. Common clients today are, of course, sophisticated web based applications, but they can be anything including rich “thick” client apps on workstations.
One of the big advantages of the J2EE application servers is their advanced transaction handling, being able to let applications maintain transaction state across several sources. So, an application can have a transaction that affects two completely different databases for example. This kind of functionality doesn’t come stock with something like Tomcat.
The JMS is Java Messaging Service. This is basically a queuing service that lets systems monitor common areas for process requests, handle them, and return the result.
You can have muliple data sources and multiple services.
Where the J2EE system really works well is as an integration platform. You can use it to tie together multiple legacy systems and databases.
Most DON’T use it like that, but that’s really one of the driving forces in the architecture.
“The neat thing about an app server is that it provides a lot of functionality that you don’t need to write yourself. It takes care of the communication layer between the client and the appserver, between the appserver and the database, and a whole bunch of other stuff.”
So basically it’s a software BLADE?
So essentially one could call their implementation “Coffee VM” and it would alright. If that is the case, why is there are so many people whining and whinging?
I think the only person whining is JBoss. They are whining because they want to be Java certified but they don’t want to pay for it. But there are several other free products out there that claim to be compliant but state upfront that they are not certified.