An XML toolkit for Web servers (3/5) - exploring XML

An XML toolkit for Web servers

Enabling servlets

As mentioned earlier servlets can be used to replace CGI scripts that often rely on server APIs. Java has built-in support for things like networking, database access, and string manipulation that are uniform across server platforms. This way, servlets are easily portable to any Java-enabled Web server. So you can develop servlets on a Windows 98 laptop and copy them directly over to a Web server, which might be running Apache under Solaris.

The servlet API is a standard Java extension and comes as part of the JDK 1.2. The Java Servlet Development Kit (JSDK) also provides a simple Java server, ServletRunner, for testing servlets locally before deploying.

Many Web servers can host servlets, but support may not be enabled. Check with your system administrator or Web hosting service to determine if your server can. If your server does not support servlets, then you need to get one of the many servlet engines available. Your choices include:

• Apache JServ
• Apache Tomcat
• Allaire JRun Pro
• New Atlanta ServletExec

The first two are Open Source projects from the Apache Group, creators of the most popular Web server of the same name. The latter two are commercial offerings, but free evaluation versions are available. Every Java Application Server also comes with a servlet engine.

Apache Tomcat is itself an all-Java implementation so the installation amounts to putting the JAR Java Archive somewhere and starting the servlet engine using the Java runtime installed before. All of these products have detailed installation instructions, and the Windows versions come in installer packages.

Next is the installation of the XSL Processor:

Produced by Michael Claßen
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URL: https://www.webreference.com/xml/column18/3.html
Created: Aug 27, 2000
Revised: Aug 27, 2000