New Name, New Owner, NewfangledThe latest incarnation of Bluestone's application server packs in the e-commerce featuresBy Nelson King Object-oriented (OO) programming speeds up development and improves maintenance, reusability, and modifiability of software. As a result, object technologies (such as Java and COM) have carved a niche for themselves in today's computing environment. However, most organizations store their data in relational databases. There is a fundamental mismatch between the two technologies.
For any company that wasn't using an application server years ago for client/server applications, Web applications have probably forced the issue by now. The Web automatically partitions applications anyway (Web server, database server, and browser client) and making the best of that arrangement almost requires an application server. The more ambitious the e-commerce plans, the more important the application server. Of course, choosing and implementing the right application server - and all that goes with it, including the application development environment, server configurations, and database connectivity - is not simple. It's particularly difficult in the enterprise environment because of the demands for scalability and manageability. To qualify as an enterprise-level application server, a product (or suite of products) has to pack a lot of features and make them relatively easy to use. Total-e-Server, which Hewlett-Packard acquired from Bluestone Software Inc. after this 7.2 release, qualifies with honors. Formerly called Sapphire/Web Application Server, Total-e-Server has roots that go all the way back to the client/server days. This history shows in the degree of detail and polish built into many of the components. However, like most companies in the domain of Web application development, Bluestone had to do some fancy dancing to keep ahead of the technology and trends. Object orientation, Java, and distributed Web development have swept over the industry and left their mark on Total-e-Server. Along with frequent repackaging, Bluestone's marketing was a bit heavy-handed with its nomenclature: Total-e-Server is the foundation for the Total-e-Business platform, which includes the products Java Transaction Server, Total-e-B2B, Total-e-B2C, Total-e-Mobile, and Total-e-Global. The key component of the Total-e-Server package is the Universal Business Server (UBS) - that is, the application server itself. Working with the UBS are the Universal Listener Framework (ULF), Security Console, Load Balancing Broker (LBB), J2EE Developer, and the XML Server. This confusion all sorts out when you get to implementation, but it must be hell for the sales reps to explain. What's essential to know is that Total-e-Server is a completely Java product. It is Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE ) compliant. In fact, it is one of the leading J2EE implementations. It also depends heavily on XML as the language of communication and data transfer within the product components. The product assumes that programmers and developers are completely familiar with Java - if not expert - and need explanations for only new elements of J2EE, XML, and how the product works. That's to say the tutorials and documentation, which are quite good, also assume knowledge of more than basic Java, HTML, and XML programming. The aspect of Total-e-Server that distinguishes it from many competitors is the degree to which enterprise-level services such as security, load balancing, and application management not only exist but also are fully featured and provided with a good user interface. Using tools such as the Application Manager, I found it unusually easy to access and manage Total-e-Server's long list of functions, and in particular the full slate of state management options, including stateless, client (HTML or cookie), and persistent (even storing state information in a JDBC database). Not that a full-scale implementation of Total-e-Server is trivial. Because of the interaction between components, say between security and data connectivity, you can expect to spend a lot of time experimenting with configuration. This is especially true if you're coaxing performance out of a system that isn't as speed oriented as products such as Persistence Software Inc.'s PowerTier application server. A component of Total-e-Server that deserves special mention is the Universal Listener Framework. As far as I know, this is a unique system for monitoring data communications including HTTP, FTP, email, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Java Messaging Service (JMS), and IBM MQ Series messages. Because it connects with the UBS, the Listener can act upon the data. This should be particularly useful for mobile services, and in fact has been an important selling point for Total-e-Server. The LBB runs either on a Web server (all major servers are supported) or on a proxy server, which is convenient in large systems. All instances of the UBS register with the LBB so that when one application server becomes overloaded, the load can be shifted to other servers. The approach is simple and lets you add servers on the fly. The Security Console is a good example of the sophistication available in Total-e-Server and the user interfaces designed to give you easy access to its capabilities. It's a role-based security system where you define groups, users, and their roles within applications (see Figure 1). Roles can be applied to all levels of an application. In the background, Total-e-Server supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Secure HTTP (SHTTP), lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), and automatic message encryption. The highlight of the current Total-e-Server version is expanded support for Java Server Pages (JSP). Because the JSP specification is still something of a work in progress (with associated difficulties), many vendors implement JSP with a light touch. Not this vendor. The UBS itself doesn't run the pages; rather, it uses a servlet process that can be run on a different machine from the Web server. This feature is important because it allows scalability simply by increasing the number of UBS engines running JSP servlets rather than spawning processes from a single Web server. New in this version is support for JSP tag libraries (taglibs), reusable modules of Java code for Web pages. The resemblance between taglibs and old-style function libraries is striking, or it just goes to prove that certain ways of doing things are universal. In particular, I like the way this product implements taglibs for database connectivity, primarily to process SQL statements for back-end database servers. With some discipline, taglibs could be a good way to standardize Web page features across an enterprise. Here's what I liked most about the J2EE Developer: Java Editor, XML Editor, DTD Editor, and SQL Editor under one roof (see Figure 2). This is an appropriate collection of tools not only for Total-e-Server but also for Web development in general. Most of these tools are not state-of-the-art. The Java Editor is rudimentary compared to Borland JBuilder or IBM Visual Age, but its limited capabilities fit within the J2EE framework Total-e-Server provides. This framework is designed for EJB creation, and the support tools - especially the EJB Wizard - do much of the heavy coding for you. The product's creators were aware that developers use other development tools, so they left room to integrate that work. You can create taglibs, in particular, almost anywhere and easily use them within Total-e-Server. As can be expected with enterprise-level products, there's a lot of functionality in the Total-e-Server package. It shines in the handling of application management, Java options, scalability, and messaging; it's less impressive on performance. Most corporations could install and operate Total-e-Server without an army of consultants, which can't be said for application server environments from competitors such as Oracle and IBM. Bluestone was very aggressive with development of certain aspects of Java and in this version with support for mobile services. The latter feature alone makes Total-e-Server worth a look as we move toward smaller form-factor applications. At press time, Hewlett-Packard Corp. had just completed the stock-trade merger with Bluestone Software, and declared that it would fold the Bluestone products into the HP line. I was told that at least in the short term this doesn't signal any changes in the products. What's important, I think, is that Bluestone's technology was considered good enough to satisfy HP. For enterprise IT managers this should represent a validation for considering Total-e-Server as a serious competitor to products from other (previously bigger) companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, BEA, and IBM. Nelson King (nelsonking@earthlink.net) has written nine books on database application programming and spends much of his time in the trenches of enterprise software development.
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