Web Application Technologies: Server-side Functionality

• There are three main ways in which HTTP requests can be used to send parameters to the application:
• In the URL Query string,
• In HTTP cookies,
• In the body of requests using the POST method.
• Some terms about Java-based web applications:
• An Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) is a relatively heavyweight software component that encapsulates the logic of a specific business function within the application.
• A Plain Old Java Object (POJO) is an ordinary Java object. POJO is normally used to denote objects that are user-defined and much simpler and more lightweight than EJBs and those used in other frameworks.
• A Java Servlet is an object that resides on an application server and receives HTTP requests from clients and returns HTTP responses.
• A Java web container is a platform or engine that provides a runtime environment for Java-based web applications. Examples: Apache Tomcat, Oracle WebLogic, and JBoss.
• Examples of components commonly used for key application functions in Java-based applications are:
• Authentication — JAAS, ACEGI
• Presentation layer— SiteMesh, Tapestry
• Database object relational mapping— Hibernate
• Logging — Log4J
• LAMP: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. Open source team for applications.
• Numerous open source applications and components have been developed using PHP. Many of these provide off-the-shelf solutions for common application functions, which are often incorporated into wider custom-built applications, for example:
• Bulletin boards— PHPBB, PHP-Nuke
• Administrative front ends— PHPMyAdmin
• Web mail — SquirrelMail, IlohaMail
• Photo galleries— Gallery
• Shopping carts— osCommerce, ECW-Shop
• Wikis— MediaWiki, WakkaWikki