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Sun ONE Application Server 7 Getting Started Guide

Chapter 1
Introduction to Sun ONE Application Server 7

The following topics are included in this chapter:

About Sun ONE Application Server

Sun ONE Application Server provides the robust J2EE platform for the development, deployment, and management of e-commerce applications and web services to a broad range of servers, clients, and devices. Key features include transaction management, performance, scalability, security, and enterprise application integration. Sun ONE Application Server leverages over six years of Sun expertise in delivering highly scalable application server technology, enabling developers to rapidly build robust applications that are based on JavaServer Pages (JSP™) technology, Java Servlet, and Enterprise JavaBeans™ (EJB™) technology. This technology supports a broad range of business requirements from small departmental applications to enterprise-scale, mission-critical services.

Product Line Overview

Sun ONE Application Server 7 is a J2EE 1.3 specification-compatible application server which also supports emerging Java Web Services standards as well as standard HTTP server programming facilities. Three editions of the application server are offered to suit a variety of needs for both production and development environments:

Platform Edition

Platform Edition forms the core of the Sun ONE Application Server 7 product line. This free-for-production-use product offers a high-performance, small-footprint J2EE 1.3 specification-compatible runtime environment that is ideally suited for basic operational deployments, as well as for embedding in third-party applications. Web-services ready, the Platform Edition includes built-in technologies proven by the Sun ONE Web Server and Sun ONE Message Queue products.

Platform Edition deployments are limited to single application server instances (i.e. single virtual machines for the Java platform (“Java virtual machine” or “JVM™”)). Multi-tier deployment topologies are supported by the Platform edition, but the web server tier proxy does not perform load balancing. In Platform Edition, administrative utilities are limited to local clients only.

The Platform Edition of Sun ONE Application Server 7 is scheduled to be integrated into Solaris 9 from early 2003 onwards.

Standard Edition

This is the edition that is the focus of this Getting Started Guide. The Standard Edition layers enhanced, remote-management capabilities on top of the Platform Edition. Enhanced management capabilities, remote command-line, and web-based administration are all included as part of the Standard Edition. This edition also includes the ability to partition web application traffic through a web server tier proxy. Standard Edition supports configuration of multiple application server instances (JVMs) per machine.

Enterprise Edition

Enterprise Edition enhances the core application server platform with greater high availability, load balancing and clustering capabilities suited for the most demanding J2EE-based application deployments. The management capabilities of the Standard Edition are extended in Enterprise Edition to account for multi-instance and multi-machine deployments.

Clustering support includes easy-to-configure groups of cloned application server instances to which client requests can be load balanced. Both external load balancers and load balancing web tier-based proxies are supported by this edition. HTTP session, stateful session bean instance and Java Message Service (JMS) resource failover are included in the Enterprise Edition. The patented “Always On” highly available database technology forms the basis for the HA persistence store in the Enterprise Edition.

For more product information, see the Sun ONE Application Server page on the Sun Microsystems web site.

What’s New in Sun ONE Application Server

The Sun ONE Application Server 7 core introduces a wide variety of new features that enhance both the developer and operational experience.

All of these new features are included in all editions of the product.

Developer Features

The Sun ONE Application Server 7 distribution includes the following developer features:

Operational Features

The Sun ONE Application Server 7 distribution includes the following operational features:

Major Product Components

The Sun ONE Application Server 7, Standard Edition distribution includes the following components:

Downloadable evaluation distributions are available in two forms: One distribution includes the Sun ONE Studio IDE while the other does not.

The evaluation distribution on CD ROM includes the Sun ONE Studio IDE.

All of the components listed above are included in the evaluation distributions and are installed automatically as part of your installation.

Application Server Core

The Application Server Core is a deployment ready, J2EE 1.3 certified application server and HTTP server.

Sun ONE Messages Queue 3.0.1

Also available as a separate product, the Sun ONE Message Queue 3.0.1 product (formerly known as iPlanet Message Queue) is an integral part of the of the application server. This all Java component delivers a robust JMS provider for both JMS clients and MDBs.

Sun ONE Studio 4, Enterprise Edition for Java

The Sun ONE Studio 4, Enterprise Edition for Java IDE product including a trial license is available as part of the application server evaluation distribution. This product is the follow on release of the product formerly known as Forte for Java 3, Enterprise Edition for Java.

PointBase Database Server and Type 4 JDBC Driver

PointBase Server 4.2 relational database is included with the application server to support the bundled sample applications and development of JDBC-based applications. PointBase's Type 4 driver supporting the JDBC™ API (“JDBC driver”) is preconfigured during installation. Tables are also created and populated for all of the sample applications that depend on JDBC. The bundled PointBase distribution has a 5 Mb total database size limitation.

Java 2 Software Development Kit, Standard Edition 1.4.0_02

Sun ONE Application Server requires J2SE 1.4.x, SDK and leverages the performance and feature improvements that are part of the 1.4 platform.

Architectural Overview

A Sun ONE Application Server 7 deployment consists of a number of application server instances, an administrative server and, optionally, one or more web server tier proxy plugins.

Figure 1-1  Sun ONE Application Server deployment

This figure shows a typical Sun ONE Application Server deployment.

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 and 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 either 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 either in a standalone mode or within a standard Application Client Container and 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.

Development Integration

A key feature of Sun ONE Application Server 7 is its tight integration with the popular Sun ONE Studio 4, Enterprise Edition for Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Included with the application server is an integration module that extends key facets of Sun ONE Studio to further enhance developer productivity when working with the Sun ONE Application Server.

Figure 1-2  Sun ONE Application Server development integration

This figure shows a Sun ONE Application Server with development integration.

The Sun ONE Application Server integration module enhances key development features of Sun ONE Studio 4, Enterprise Edition for Java as described in the following table.

Table 1-1  Key development features 

Studio feature

Sun ONE Application Server Extension

CMP mapping

Developers can browse database tables, select related tables and automatically generate Container Managed Persistence (CMP) EJB technology.

Server runtime control

Developers can easily register both local and remote application servers and start and stop application server instances.

Resource configuration

Before deploying applications, developers can register J2EE resources in any of the registered application servers. JDBC resources and connection pools, JMS resources, and a variety of other resources can be configured from within the Studio.

Application deployment

Developers can select from the list of registered application servers and leverage the dynamic (“hot”) deployment and redeployment features supported in Sun ONE Application Server 7.

Debugging and log viewing

Debugging against deployed applications on both local and remote application server instances is simple. No manual configuration of the application servers is necessary.

While debugging their applications, developers can also view the server event log files from within the Studio.

Deployment Topologies

Sun ONE Application Server 7, Platform and Standard Editions support both single machine and multi-machine, tiered deployments. No application server clustering is supported in these editions. Standard Edition provides enhanced web tier support by allowing you to partition HTTP/S traffic arriving on the same web server instance to multiple application servers in the middle tier. No load balancing from the plugin is supported in these editions.

While Platform Edition is limited to a single application server instance (i.e. a single JVM process) per administrative domain, the Standard Edition can be configured with multiple application server instances per administrative domain.

The Enterprise Edition supports multi-tiered, multi-machine, clustered application server deployments. In Enterprise Edition, the web tier supports load balancing and application traffic partitioning via a web server plugin. Cloning of application server instances as well as cluster oriented administrative operations are supported in Enterprise Edition.



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