Introducing the Power of iAS

Many of the benefits of iAS are derived from its simple three-tier computing model: client, application server, and database are on separate tiers. As the middle tier, iAS provides the optimal interface between clients and databases:

• Application logic is centralized and can be easily maintained.
• The architectural design of the middle tier is optimized for server functions, including access to a database.
• Oracle8i Cache accelerates delivery of Web pages by providing database caching in the middle tier, reducing the load on the back-end database instance, and avoiding network roundtrips for read-only data.

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Delivering Web Content

iAS can help you quickly and economically deliver Web content for the Internet and for internal and external intranets in the form of:

• static Web pages
• dynamic Web pages
• business documents
• business intelligence

Static Web Pages

Using the proven technology of the Apache Web Server, iAS delivers static content such as HTML pages, XML data, and text files. Oracle HTTP Server Web listener delivers static content rapidly to a large user base with high performance, reliability, and stability.

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Dynamic Web Pages

Using the Oracle HTTP Server modules and the many Apache modules that are included in the HTTP Server component, iAS supports all of the current Internet application technologies to deliver dynamic content such as Java servlets, JavaServer pages, PL/SQL Server pages, and CGI scripts using Perl.

In addition, iAS is tightly integrated with Oracle8i Cache and can call PL/SQL stored procedures through the Oracle HTTP Server PL/SQL module (mod_plsql) that integrates seamlessly with Oracle HTTP Server.

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Business Documents

On internal or external corporate intranets, iAS easily delivers business documents, including word-processed documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, and various documents in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (.pdf).

Business Intelligence

To know what is happening in your e-business every day, iAS delivers business intelligence over the Web or over your corporate intranet:

• Reports Services publish reports that pull data directly from the database.
• Forms Services provide client browser access, via downloaded applets, to Forms-based Web applications that perform business analysis and deliver the results to client browsers.
• Discoverer 3i Viewer can be used to view Discoverer workbooks, which provide ad hoc querying, what-if analysis, and advanced analysis and forecasting capabilities.

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Processing Transactions

iAS supports both stateless and stateful transactions:

Stateless transactions consist of a request and a response. No information about the user (the requestor) is tracked by the system, and each transaction is unrelated to those that precede or follow it.

Stateful transactions are similar to database sessions in that information about the user (the initiator of the transaction) is tracked by the system for one or more phases of the transaction.The system also tracks the state (the set of conditions at a given moment) of one or more preceding events in the sequence of a transaction.

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Summary of Supported Technologies and Programming Languages

For delivering Web content, transaction processing, and program development and deployment, iAS components support the following technologies and programming languages:

For a description of each iAS service and element, and for information about developing and deploying applications in iAS, see the Oracle Internet Application Server Overview Guide.

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