| Sun ONE Application Server 7 Performance Tuning Guide |
Chapter 1
About Sun ONE Application ServerSun ONE Application Server provides a reliable and scalable web services deployment platform. Application programmers can focus on implementing business logic with well-engineered software components and rely on the services offered by Sun ONE Application Server for production scale deployment.
This chapter includes the following topics:
Server ComponentsSun ONE Application Server includes various components that need to interact with each other. These components can be tuned for optimum performance in both production and development environments.
This section describes the following topics:
Application Server Processes
The Sun ONE Application Server runs within a single process called appservd.
The Sun ONE Application Server process is invoked by running the startserv script which reads the configuration information specified in the server.xml and launches the server instance and starts:
Databases
Oracle, Sybase, Informix and DB2 are some of the databases supported by Sun ONE Application Server. Using Sun ONE Application Server, you can also configure third party JDBC drivers for databases. For more information on configuring the datasources and connection pools, refer to the Sun ONE Application Server Administration Guide.
Server Architecture
Figure 1-1 Sun ONE Application Server Component Architecture
The Sun ONE Application Server provides the foundation for high performance web request handling, security, and administration. The main components within the application server are shown in the above figure.
Application Server instances form the basis of an application server deployment. J2EE 1.3 web and EJB containers are included in each application server instance. A proven, high performance HTTP server is positioned in front of the web container while a built in ORB forms the underpinning of the EJB container. In support of access to backend systems, applications can leverage J2EE Connector Architecture support and third party Resource Adapters; JMS with either the built-in JMS provider or third-party providers; and any combination of popular third-party JDBC drivers. Access to backend systems can be managed within the scope of distributed transactions using the built-in, all-Java Transaction Manager.
The Administrative Server houses the core administrative application and an SNMP agent. All remote management activity flows through the administrative server. Both command-line and web browser based administrative clients access the administrative server directly through HTTP or securely through HTTPS.
Web Sever Proxy Plugins enable you to deploy the application server behind one or more web servers housed in a demilitarized zone (DMZ) that is bracketed by one or more layers of firewalls. The plugins provide a means for the front-end web server tier to direct incoming HTTP/S traffic received from the internet to one or more application servers housed in a backend application server tier.
A variety of client applications can access business services deployed to the application server. Web services and browser-based clients can use either HTTP or HTTPS to access the Java Web Services and J2EE web applications. Java application clients can be deployed in a standalone mode or within a standard Application Client Container. They can use Java Remote Method Invocation over Internet Inter-ORB Protocol Technology (Java RMI-IIOP Technology) to access EJBs deployed to the application server. C++ language clients can use Java IDL/IIOP to access EJBs as well.
The basic component of Sun ONE Application server is the appservd process which is managed by a watchdog process. The Application code runs in the multi-threaded process created by the appservd process. The Java Virtual Machine (VM) is also started within the appservd.
The system is managed through the Administration Server. There is also a facility available to configure a web server installed on a separate system to act as a proxy and forward the requests to the application server instance.
Server ToolsThe Sun ONE Application Server provides two tools for administering and deploying applications to the application server. The Administration interface is available as a web-based tool. Additionally, there is a command line interface (CLI) to administer the server through the command-line. Both the web-based tool and the CLI provide all the administration capabilities.
Sun ONE Studio 4, when configured with the Sun ONE Application Server, provides application assembly and deployment capabilities.
Server Administration Interface
Figure 1-2 Sun ONE Application Server Administration interface
The Sun ONE Application Server Administration interface, as shown in the above figure, runs as a web application deployed in the administration server instance and can be accessed from anywhere using a browser. This allows the user to configure the application server instance.
As shown in the following figure, the Administration server can also be accessed through the Command-line interface (CLI). The CLI allows the user to configure the application server instance through the command-line instead of through the web-based interface.
Figure 1-3 Command-line interface for the Sun ONE Application Server
This chapters guide discusses how to use the Sun ONE Application Server Administration interface to tune server processes and application deployment descriptors to enhance performance. Refer to the Sun ONE Application Server 7 Administration Guide for further details on using the Administration interface.
Sun ONE Studio 4
The Sun ONE Studio 4 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is used to develop, assemble, and deploy Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications to the Sun ONE Application Server. Within Sun ONE Studio, J2EE application components are archived into modules according to the container that will receive them upon deployment. You can archive these J2EE application components into an EJB JAR module (archived with a .JAR extension), or a Web Application module (archived with a WAR extension). Each module contains a J2EE descriptor and a Sun ONE Application Server specific deployment descriptor saved to XML files. Refer to the Sun ONE Studio 4 Developer Guide for further details.
When using Sun ONE Studio with the Sun ONE Application Server, enterprise developers benefit from many features that combine to give seamless integration between the IDE and the application server:
