Hopefully to correct some miss conceptions....and sort out some
confusions. Application Servers and Web Services.
Start with the easy one - Web Server - Typically a server that servers
content to the web. Often this is static content, but for years people
have been using HTTP servers for dynamic continue through the use of
CGI. For IBM i, that would be the HTTP Server Powered by Apache. Shipped
in DG1. We have had several of these on IBM i over the years, but been
running Apache for some time now. Additionally, Nginx is another popular
Web Server. This also runs on IBM i and is available though the new RPMs
running in PASE.
Application Servers - Typically this is for severing dynamic content to
the web. There are many options here. Java based. WAS, Liberty, Tomcat.
(all available on IBM i today). To clarify, with IBM i OS license, you
have entitlement to WAS also know as WebSphere Application Server. All
the latest versions. Liberty, that is IBM's light weight Web runtime,
this is something that you can get either from IBM via the normal Liberty
support OR to help make things simple, its also shipped with the IBM i
operating system. Called the Integrated Application Server. Tomcat - been
running on IBM i for a very long time, back many years ago we even shipped
it with the OS. Today, its just a simple download and it works. Of
course, support has been an issue for Apache on i for a while, but as of
now, there is a new support offering that is being made available through
TSS. You can get call in support for Apache and a number of other Open
Source Packages.
There are other application servers, Node.JS, Python, PHP, all of these
provide the ability to have an interactive dynamic application interact
with the Web. (of course, these also have built in Web servers to help
with the static content and such as well).
Tim Rowe, timmr@xxxxxxxxxx
Business Architect Application Development & Systems Management for IBM i
IBM i Development Lab, Rochester, MN
(507) 253-6191 (Tie) 553-6191
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/i/are/index.html
midrange.com
