An In-Depth Look into Web

Application Administration

Web Servers

Shashikant S Kulkarni

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Introduction
 Web server
 Responds to client requests by providing resources
 Web server and client communicate with platform-
independent Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

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 Web server architecture

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How the WWW Works

(Fitzgerald and Dennis, 2005 Figure 2.8)

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Domain
Name
Server
System

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HTTP Request Types
 GET (default) and POST do basically the same thing:
Send data from the client to the server. However, they
have some differences:
 GET
 Appends form data directly to the end of the URL—visible to users
(not suitable for sending passwords)
 Limited to 2,048 characters for the entire URL
 Result page can be bookmarked and cached
 POST
 Sends form data in the HTTP request—invisible to users
 Virtually no limit (but check your specific configuration)
 Results are not cacheable or bookmarkable

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System Architecture
 Multi-tier application (n-tier application)
 Information tier (data or bottom tier)
 Maintains data for the application
 Stores data in a relational database management system
(RDBMS)
 Middle tier
 Implements business logic and presentation logic
 Control interactions between application clients and application
data
 Client tier (top tier)
 Application’s user interface
 Users interact directly with the application through the client tier

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 N-tier Client-Server Architecture

8 (Fitzgerald and Dennis, 2005 Figure 2.5)

Client-Side Scripting versus Server-
Side Scripting
 Client-side scripts
 Validate user input
 Reduce requests needed to be passed to server
 Access browser
 Enhance Web pages with DHTML, ActiveX controls, and applets
 Server-side scripts
 Executed on server
 Generate custom response for clients
 Wide range of programmatic capabilities
 Access to server-side software that extends server
functionality

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 Installing a web server

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Hosting a website:
Self hosting
 Install a web server on a computer
 Local access
 Using domain <localhost>
 or IP address 127.0.0.1
 Necessary for server-side programming development
 Global access
 Register a human-readable domain name
 Obtain IP address
 Static: Costs more
 Dynamic: Needs dynamic DNS system, e.g.
http://www.dyndns.com/

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Hosting a website:
Hosting service
 Register a domain name
 Assign name servers
 Host takes care of IP addressing
 Develop website locally
 Upload website via FTP for global access
 E.g. Filezilla

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Web server architecture
 LAMP: Most popular—fully open source
 Linux for operating system
 Apache for web server
 MySQL for database
 PHP for server-side scripting
 Others:
 WAMP: Uses Windows for operating system, with
Apache, MySQL, and PHP
 WISA: Full Microsoft package
 Windows
 Internet Information Server (IIS)
 SQL Server (enterprise) or Access (small-scale)
 ASP or ASP.NET

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Apache Web Server
 Currently the most popular Web server
 Stability
 Efficiency
 Portability
 Open-source

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All-in-one Apache/MySQL/PHP packages
 EasyPHP
 Includes PHPMyAdmin for administering MySQL
database
 Installation and configuration
 WAMP Server (recommended)

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IIS Technologies
Introduction
 Designed to deliver high speed and secure information
publishing

 Serves as a platform for developers to extend internet

standard communication capabilities

 Runs as a Windows NT 4.0 (Option Pack) service

IIS Components
 Full Scale publishing includes following
components
 Transport Services
 Client applications
 Administrative Tools
 Database Connectivity
 Encrypted Communication
IIS 4.0 Components
 Purpose  Component
 Hypertext Publishing  WWW Server
 File Transfer  FTP Server
 ODBC Gateway  Internet D/Base Con.
 Encrypted Comm.  Secure Socket Layer
 Server Admn.  Internet Service Mgr.
 Hypertext Clients  Browsers
Web Site Content
 HTML Pages
 HTML Code
 Client Side Scripts
 Active Server Pages (ASPs)
 HTML Code
 Client & Server Side Scripts
 Components
Web Content Creation Tools
 Hypertext Text Markup Language (HTML),
Dynamic HTML

 Scripting Languages
 JavaScript, Jscript and VBScript

 Component Creation Languages

 Visual Basic, Java, VisualC++, VisualJ++ etc.
Content Authoring & Management
Environment
 FrontPage
 InterDev6.0
 IIS Application (VB6.0 Feature)
 HTML Editors
IIS Application
 An IIS (Internet Information Server) application is
a Visual Basic application that lives on a Web
server and responds to requests from the
browser

 An IIS application uses HTML to present its user

interface and uses compiled Visual Basic code to
process requests and respond to events in the
browser
IIS Application
 To the user, an IIS application appears to be
made up of a series of HTML pages

 To the developer, an IIS application is made up

of a special type of object called a webclass, that
in turn contains a series of resources called
webitems
Browser-IIS Interaction
 Browser sends an HTTP request to the IIS for a
page on the web server

 The web server gets the requested page and

processes the server side scripts, (which are
enclosed within delimiters “<%” and “%>). The
scripts can assign values to variables or request
information from server (interaction with other
tiers)
Browser-IIS Interaction
 The processed page containing only HTML and
client-side scripts, if any, is sent to the browser
WAMP
What is WAMP?

 WAMP = Windows+Apache+MySql+PHP

Note:WAMP5 does not work with Windows 98,Me

WAMP Installation

 A single installation file downloaded from

http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php
After Installation
Application Service
 Apache
wampapache
 PHP
 MySQL database
wampmysql
WAMP’s Menu

Management Portals
 PHPmyadmin
 SQLitemanager

Note: A user has to click

on the icon tray to access
WAMP's menu.
WAMP’s Menu

 Configuration and
Settings
 Loaded Modules
 Directory Access
Shortcut
WAMP’s Menu

Services
 Apache
 MySQL

Note:
The icon tray
reflects the status
of your server.
Overall
 WAMP is easy to install and it is free to use.
 Migration from IIS/PHP/MsSQL to WAMP is
practical.
 The cost of migration is mainly to review queries and
change them based on the SQL extension of
MySQL.
 Apache Tomcat

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The Apache Jakarta Project
 The Apache Jakarta Project “creates and
maintains open source solutions on the Java
platform for distribution to the public at no
charge”
 Apache Jakarta Tomcat--or just “Tomcat”--is one
of those projects
 Tomcat is a container for Servlets
 Tomcat can act as a simple standalone server for Web
applications that use HTML, Servlets, and JSP
 Apache is an industrial-strength, highly optimized
server that can be extended with Tomcat
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Web apps
 A web application is basically a web site that:
 “Knows who you are”--it doesn’t just give you static pages, it
interacts with you
 Can permanently change data (such as in a database)
 A web application can consist of multiple pieces
 Static web pages (possibly containing forms)
 Servlets
 JSP
 Tomcat organizes all these parts into a single directory
structure for each web application
 ...but you have to help with the organization

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 What is Apache Tomcat?
 Apache is the most common HTTP Web Server on the
Internet.
 The Tomcat server is a Java-based Web Application
container which is used to run Servlet and Java Server
Pages (JSP) Web applications.
 Tomcat has become the reference implementation for
both the Java Servlets and Java Server Pages
specifications.
 Tomcat was chosen to be the official Sun Web
Component (JSP/Servlet ) Container Reference
Implementation.

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What is Apache Tomcat? [Contd.]
 Apache Tomcat is used to serve Java Servlets and Java
Server Pages. It's a complex piece of software and
though the documentation is very comprehensive, it
helps to have a good reference work to hand.
 It is an open source Java Servlet application server used
to deploy Java applications after they are built with JSP
and Servlets. It can be used as a stand-alone product or
it can be integrated with the Apache server.

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Alternatives to Tomcat
 Sun’s Java Web Server
 Old, no longer being developed, all in Java
 Java Web Server Development Kit (JWSDK)
 Official reference implementation
 Difficult to install and configure
 JBoss
 Open source
 Opinions vary on how easy it is to install
 Comes with built-in database

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