Embeddable Servlet Engines An embeddable engine is generally
Embeddable Servlet Engines An embeddable engine is generally a lightweight servlet deployment platform that can be embedded in another application. That application becomes the true server. Embeddable servlet engines include the following: Sun’s JavaServer Engine, a high-quality, high-end framework for designing and building Java servers. Sun’s Java Web Server and IBM’s WebSphere Application Server were built using the Java Server Engine. See http://java.sun.com/products/javaserverengine/. Jef Poskanzer’s Acme.Serve, a freely available, simple web server that runs servlets “more or less compatible” with the Servlet API. See http://www.acme.com/java/software/Package-Acme. Serve.html. Paralogic’s WebCore, a freely available but unsupported embeddable web server, written entirely in Java. It incorporates parts of Acme.Serve. See http://www.paralogic.com/webcore/. Anders Kristensen’s Nexus Web Server, a freely available servlet runner that implements most of the Servlet API and can be easily embedded in Java applications. See http://www-uk.hpl.hp.com/people/ak/java/nexus/. Additional Thoughts Before proceeding, we feel obliged to point out that not all servlet engines are created equal. So, before you choose a servlet engine (and possibly a server) with which to deploy your servlets, take it out for a test drive. Kick its tires a little. Check the mailing lists. Always verify that your servlets behave as they do in the Java Web Server implementation. With servlets, you don’t have to worry about the lowestcommon-denominator implementation, so you should pick a servlet engine that has the functionality that you want. For a complete, up-to-date list of available servlet engines, see the official list maintained by Sun at: http://jserv.java.sun.com/products/java-server/servlets/environments.html The Power of Servlets So far, we have portrayed servlets as an alternative to other dynamic web content technologies, but we haven’t really explained why we think you should use them. What makes servlets a viable choice for web development? We believe that servlets offer a number of advantages over other approaches, including: portability, power, efficiency, endurance, safety, elegance, integration, extensibility, and flexibility. Let’s examine each in turn. Portability Because servlets are written in Java and conform to a well-defined and widely accepted API, they are highly portable across operating systems and across server implementations. You can develop a servlet on a Windows NT machine running the Java Web Server and later deploy it effortlessly on a high-end Unix server running Apache. With servlets, you can truly “write once, serve everywhere.” Servlet portability is not the stumbling block it so often is with applets, for two reasons. First, servlet portability is not mandatory. Unlike applets, which have to be tested on all possible client platforms, servlets have to work only on the server machines that you are using for development and deployment. Unless you are in the business of selling your servlets, you don’t have to worry about complete portability. Second, servlets avoid the most error-prone and inconsistently implemented portion of the Java language: the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) that forms the basis of Java graphical user interfaces.
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