InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
September 20, 1999
InternetView:A Good App Server Alternative
By Jason Levitt
Internet history has already proven that the best open-source software is for the back office. Whether it's the Apache Web server or the Sendmail mail-routing agent, any software that can be dropped into a server farm and do its job is going to find adoptees and support among developers. Application servers are ripe for this market as the general requirements for a good app server start to become clearer. Application servers need solid load-balancing and failover capabilities, good database connectivity options, decent caching mechanisms, and hooks into standard and de facto interfaces such as CGI and the various Java APIs. The actual scripting language used seems less important than the ability to run compiled applications in the same process space as the Web server.
Sun Microsystems suggests using Java to script applications, an approach that has merit. Sun just released the JavaServer Pages specification 1.1, a complete specification for a Java application server that includes a reference implementation and copious supporting documentation. I expect to see decent open-source implementations of this application server in the coming months. But any solution that relies on the Java servlet API must prove that it can perform as well as approaches that use compiled C code, such as Microsoft Active Server Pages.
While AOLserver uses Tcl, and JavaServer Pages uses Java, other open-source application servers have their own unique development environments. Zope, an open-source application server that recently released an upgrade, is written in and makes use of the Python programming language for scripting. PHP has a unique C-like programming language that it uses for scripting. Numerous Web sits are running PHP and Zope. Both application servers are aggressively being upgraded with new features by the developer community.
Some commercial application servers have the edge when it comes to database connectivity, load-balancing, and other high-end options, but open-source application servers are gaining ground.
-Jason Levitt can be reached at jlevitt@cmp.com
You can read his Internet Zone column on InformationWeek Online at www.informationweek.com/author/internet.htm
he market for commercial application servers isn't going to disappear overnight, but freely available open-source alternatives are looking better all the time. Take, for instance, the recently released AOLserver, a Web and application server used extensively by America Online. AOLserver's built-in Tcl interpreter and database connectivity options are interesting, but the fact that the product is ostensibly supported by one of the busiest Web sites in the world makes it easier for IT managers to give it serious consideration. 
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