preferred web environment

[Lloyd H. Meinholz]

On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 13:11, Bob Smith wrote:
> I'm using RH9, so I can't answer your question vis EL AS.   However, if 
> you are going to support application work moving forward, then at a 
> minimum Apache 2.0 and Tomcat 5.  There are significant organizational 
> improvements in Apache 2.x over 1.3, and support for application servers 
> is predominately being focused on 2.0.  In application circles, 1.3 is 
> considered EOL, as is Tomcat 4.x.

There are good reasons to stick with apache 1.3.x. Some modules have/had
problems with apache 2.0. I had a big problem getting getRemoteUser(),
mod_jk or mod_jk2 and apache 2.0 to work properly. I've only recently
found a work around (see tomcat bug 28516) but it's still an open issue
as far as I'm concerned. Tomcat 5 is not that old either and I don't
think Tomcat 4 is considered EOL. Heck, tomcat 3.3 is still in use.

On big advantage of Apache 2.0 for me is that two modules that are
important to me (auth_ldap and mod_ssl) are now built in, so I no longer
have to build them seperately.

If I were setting up from scratch with no dependencies, I would do it
like Bob said, Apache 2.0 and Tomcat 5. But I would not say at a
minimum...

Since Tomcat has it's own HTTP connector, there is an interesting debate
on whether you need apache at all. My opinion:
* if you need an apache module that Tomcat doesn't support, you probably
need apache
* if you do lots of static web pages, you might want apache (I've heard
Tomcat's speed at serving static content is close enough to apache
though).

I use apache because I do a lot with SSL certificates and doing it with
apache is easier for me than with java and I imagine (but have
absolutely no proof) that mod_ssl is faster than java ssl
implementation. Also, I don't like Security Realms in Tomcat and prefer
to do my own security using the user authentication info from apache.
This is just me though, your requirements are probably different...

> JBoss provides Apache 2.0, I believe, in its latest release, and I'm not 

JBoss has it's own HTTP server written in Java, just like Tomcat does.
You can stick Apache in front of it though (works the same as with
Tomcat since Tomcat is embedded in JBoss).

> entirely sure which tomcat engine is runs, but 5 should work there as 
> well.  JBoss provides you with a bundle of it's latest working 
> environment, if you want to go with a one-shot solution.
> 
> If you are looking to support a J2EE and EJB capable environment, then 
> JBoss is the answer.  Otherwise, you can provide non-EJB equivalent 
> application environment easily with Apache 2.0.x and Tomcat-Jakarta 5.x.
> 
> -Bob
> 
> Robert D. Kutsy wrote:
> 
> >Hello Listers:
> >
> >Are there any thoughts as to a preferred web environment on Enterprise Linux
> >AS:
> >
> >1) Apache 1.3 + Tomcat 4+
> >2) Apache 2.0 + Tomcat 4+
> >3) JBoss

I would stay away from JBoss unless you really must do EJB. It's way
more complicated and slow than apache/tomcat only solution. There is a
newish lightweight container approach that seems like a better way to
me. Check out the Spring Framework <http://www.springframework.org/> for
an interesting way of doing J2EE stuff without EJB's. It is a really
nice framework for solving a lot of common problems. It includes some
AOP stuff and hibernate support, lots of other interesting things. I'm
just getting started with spring right now, but architecturally, I agree
strongly with what their goal is.

Lloyd