7/14/2008
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Intro to Application Servers
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- What is JEE?
	. JEE is a specification
	. Sun - "coordinated technologies that significatnly reduces the cost and complexity of developing, deploying and managing multi-tier server-centric applications"
- What are JEE Application Servers ?
	. Provide a container / platform for running applications that implement the JEE Spec
	. Most provide multi-threading, high availability through clustering, load balancing
	. Provides a central location for managing resources (Databases, Application Instances)
	. Often provides JEE Services
		. Servlet
		. Java Server Pages
		. EJB
		. JMS
		. JPA
		. JTA
		. JDBC Connection Pooling
		. JNDI
- What are the different types of Application Servers?
	. Those that fully implement the JEE Spec and those that don't
	. Servlet (Web) Containers
		- provide limited implementation of the JEE Spec
			. Servlet
			. JSP
			. JNDI
			. JDBC Connection Pooling
		- host web applications (war)
	. JEE Application Containers
		- provide the full implementation of the JEE Spec
			. EJB
			. JMS
		- host Enterprise Applications (ear)
- Why would you want to use one?
	. multi-threading
	. high availability - clustering / load balancing
	. Deploy Java Applications onto the Web
	. If you want to build Web Services
- What are the most widely used application servers?
	. Open Source (free to download and use in production environment)
		- Jetty "Mortbay" (Servlet Container)
		- Tomcat "Apache" (Servlet Container)
		- GlassFish "Sun" (JEE Container)
		- Geronimo "Apache" (JEE Container)
	. Commercial (must pay for licenses to use in production environment)
		- BEA Weblogic - purchased by Oracle
		- Websphere - IBM
- How do you install and configure one?
- How do you deploy applications to an Application Server?


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GlassFish
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* RefCardz now available for GlassFish c/o DZone
* Great.  No problem getting things up and running, very smooth experience
- Install
	. download the *.jar file
	. java -Xmx256m -jar 'filename'
		- accept the license agreement
		- will unbundle glassfish into 'glassfish' dir
	. cd 'glassfish'
	. lib/ant/bin/ant -f setup.xml	
		- will create default domain
		* domain - "provides authentication and administration for the server instance that belongs to it"
- Starting Domain 
	. ./asadmin.bat start-domain domain1
	. launch a browser and connect using http://localhost:4848
	. login as admin/adminadmin
- Deploying Applications
	. AutoDeploy
		- copy the artifact to the $GLASSFISH_HOME/domains/domain1/autodeploy
		- access application at http://localhost:8080/hello
- Stopping Domain
	.  ./asadmin.bat stop-domain domain1

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JBoss
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* Noisy output.  Can distract from what is really happening
* Ugly Administration Console
- Install
	. download the zip file
	. extract it to some directory
* Different configurations
	. minimal - provides bare minimum services including logging, jndi, url deployment scanner
	. default - base JEE 1.4 server
	. all - all services
* To start server with alternate configuration './run.bat -c minimal'
- Starting JBoss
	. $JBOSS_HOME/bin/run.bat
- Deploying Applications
	. move the applications to the deploy directory under the configuration that is currently running
- Undeploy Applications
	. delete it from the deploy directory
- Stopping the Server
	. Ctrl+C

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Jetty
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* Light Weight, and very fast Web Container
* No administration console
* OPINION - most widely used container out there.
- Install
	. download and extract the file contents to some directory
- Starting Jetty
	. java -jar start.jar ./etc/jetty.xml
		- starts jetty with an example web application
	. will start the server with the contexts described in $JETTY_HOME/contexts
	. also browses $JETTY_HOME/webapps for applications on startup
* does not support hot deploy from the webapps directory
- Deploying applications
	. if you want hot deploy, then you have to configure an xml file in the $JETTY_HOME/contexts
	. if you are fine with shutdown and startup - then you can put new versions of *.war files into webapp directory
- Undeploy Applications
	- delete it
- Stopping the Server
	- CTRL+C