I'm looking to install Railo in the same way we currently do for Adobe CF.
At present we run Adobe CF8 on top of JRUN 4, in a multiple instance setup. On our local sandboxes we use Apache as the web server. We then use Apache Virtual Directories to point to our codebase which exists outside of the CF Context. This gives us ultimate flexibility in that we can be running multiple servers, multiple sites, from anywhere location on our machines. In Production we use IIS 6, but the above still applies.
All the documentation that I've come across to date has not yet been able to emulate this. I've tried combinations of JBoss, Railo WAR, Apache, JkMount, Resin, JRUN, etc.
Things we are trying to avoid: We don't want Tomcat to be involved (duplicating the web server requirement), we don't want to have to configure anything in JBoss per new site (as well as Apache), we need our codebase to be run from any location.
Has anyone successfully managed to emulate this approach for Railo? Could you point me in the right direction, or could a representative from Railo write a blog post for it?
Thanks in advance!
Dave
The ability to install several instances of Railo or CF is not a Railo or CF feature but one of the application server. Railo has the great built in Sandbox security for each defined web context. A web context normally is aligned with a virtual host setting in the app server. Since in Adobe CF there is only one web context something like the sandbox security needs to be applied.
Anyway, different application servers (like Resin) allow you to use regular expressions for virtual hosts definition (this means that the web contexts are created on the fly and implicitly) or single conf files in a certain directory for each web context you want to create. After this has happened the settings for your different applications running in the different web contexts are separated from each other. Security at its best.
You can have your webroots located wherever you like. The only thing that does not work is that you create a virtual directory in Apache or IIS and then your application already runs in there as well. BUT what you can do in Railo is to create a mapping that is called identically and that points to the exact same location. Then you can use it exactly as in CF.
We might even consider to read the virtual directories from the web servers and implicitly create the corresponding mappings. In addition you could create per application mappings in order to solve that problem.
If you have any other questions, just email our Railo google group.
Gert Franz
Railo Professional Open Source
gert (at) getrailo.com
Here is a blog post on setting up Railo in JRun. Sean would be the guy to ask about this too if you have any more problems.
Related
I am looking to develop some web app for my Android device. Found Sencha and think it might be a good tool to try out.
I suppose I would need to find a web server to host the Sencha app to run the app? What kind of web server is needed? I suppose one that able to run HTML5, CSS, Javascript is enough?
Can anybody recommend one (free one)?
Thanks.
++++++++++++
Thanks for the answers to the above post. I am new to this stuff, so got some more follow-up and somewhat related questions:
1) I read from the Sencha site that the app can be developed locally using things like XAMPP installed on local Windows PC. Question -- Why need this local host when I can just use an external Web Host?
2) It was also mentioned that for Windows may not need XAMPP if Window's Internet Information Server (IIS) is already running. How do I know if my computer is running this and so don't need to install another local server? (I asking this because I had installed an XAMPP before on another computer and things got quite messed up and so I want to avoid doing it if possible).
3) Once I got a web host, to have an app running, I would just have to have the JS files in the web host together with the Sencha framework right? If so, then I don't understand what is meant by "Build" in the Sencha documentation.
Thanks.
Sencha Touch is a client side framework, therefore there are no server side requirements. That said, any web host should do.
However, I'll go ahead an make a recommendation... a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, PHP, MySql) will work the best. Of course you can substitute any of the stack for something of your favor, this setup seems to be the most favorable. Some of my colleagues utilize Ruby/RoR instead of PHP, so as you can see it is quite flexible in terms of environment.
When searching for a hosting provider, do your research and select something that fits with your budget but still gives you the best bang for your buck. Be sure to ask them questions!
Tip: Make sure you have access to your web server's configuration file so you can add mime_types and make other mobile oriented tweaks if needed.
First you must know that HTML5, CSS and Javascript are all front end stuff that do not count when you talk about Hosting. These are taken care of by the client agent (browser).
What really matters is your server side language: PHP, Python(Django), Ruby, etc.
So it mainly doesn't matter which framework, as much as which language that framework use.
This is a generic answer that will help you decide not only in terms of Sencha but for any other framework.
Take for instance WordPress. It uses PHP and MySQL, so first I look if my Web host supports Mysql and PHP and in general this would be enough to know that I can use if for my WordPress site.
And by the way, most Web host companies allow you to ask them questions before buying. So go ahead and question them about anything that concerns your requests.
Sencha provides an app hosting service through its Sencha.io cloud services.
I'm trying to setup a server based on our needs for a new website. Basically, I need to build a website based on social engine, and according to the platform's requirements (found here: http://www.socialengine.net/support/documentation/article?q=152&question=SocialEngine-Requirements) it requires the webserver to be Apache based.
Now my issue comes with the addition of a web application that needs to be included in the site. The web application requires the server to be capable of Asynchronous Request Processing, and is currently only supported by Tomcat or GlassFish.
I found a couple tutorials such as this one http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/2203891/Integrating-Tomcat-with-Apache.htm that explain how to "integrate" Tomcat into Apache. Would a server running Tomcat alone be able to handle the applet needs as well as serve the Apache (assuming HTTP) needs from the Social Engine platform? Are there any hosting providers any of you would reccomend?
Although I've done alot of front end stuff before, this is the first time i have to deal with any of the back end details, so my knowledge of server side functionality is really garbage. Please let me know if I'm not asking the right questions.
Thanks
You wouldn't really be able to use Tomcat for both apps, since the other one needs PHP. It's pretty common to have both Tomcat and Apache running on the same server. You might want to look up more recent documentation on mixing them, even this but definitely have a look at mod_proxy_ajp.
What's the other application? It's a little tricky to set up Asynchronous Request Processing if you are new to server apps, but there is also a lot of documentation, so if you're game, you can probably figure it out OK. You might also want to see if that app would work with node.js (hosting info here)
If you want to set it all up yourself, you could get a virtual private server from Rackspace Cloud or similar host or get a shared host that has the required apps already set up, which would limit your ability to customize the environment and may require 2 hosting plans, but would be easier to set up. It also somewhat depends on if both apps need to be on the same machine for any reason and/or on the same domain.
A regular LAMP stack will run SE4 just fine, however, you will need to do some tuning to get the page loads under 3 seconds. You will want to remove any Apache modules that you aren't using with a2dismod. For instance, if you're not using any Ruby on the site, a2dismod ruby. This will help get memory usage under control. APC is a must.
For a much more in depth read on tuning php/apache, please read this: Performance tuning on Apache, PHP, MySQL, WordPress v1.1 – Updated
We have an issue that I can't wrap my head around regarding possible solutions.
We have a site that runs off of a Dot Net Nuke CMS, with a custom asp.net CMS powering a reviews engine aspect of it too. This is hosted on a Windows server setup on SQL servers and has its own user registry.
We are looking at a script for an add on revenue offering, and the best of breed we have found happens to be Linux-based using MySQL servers. There are some other options, but none are nearly as robust as the Linux based one.
Our quandry is two-fold:
1) If we use this script, we will need to host a linux server with a different host service (ours only does windows servers). Both server sets will point to the same domain (www.mydomain.com) and have communication between the MySQL DB on the Linux machine and the SQL DB on the Windows machine.
Is this possible...and problematic? Or is this a fairly straightforward issue to solve?
2) The larger issue if the first is a hurdle that can be cleared is we would want to share our user registry between the two databases, so the user would not be logging into each DB when going between the two environments.
This issue is more complex than my understanding of authentication and databases so I'm hoping someone can help me out or at least start me in a good direction for research.
We could go with the other script routes, but they simply don't offer the functions or features of the more difficult to implement code.
OK, you can always run MySQL on the Windows box and install cgywin to run the script in a more unix type environment. Or run xampp on a different port: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
I'm in the process of providing a Web UI as an alternative to our current desktop UI for our C/S enterprise application.
When developing the client-side in our desktop version, UI developers could connect to any server so they only needed the client-side environment.
When developing a Web UI (Client-side JavaScript in the browser), we are bound by the browser's "Same origin policy" so the UI must talk to the same server from which the UI code is downloaded.
As far as I see it till now, the development scenario for the UI guys is:
Developer installs server on local
machine and runs it.
Developer edits the HTML+JS+CSS files on local installation.
Developer has to reinstall/update server on local machine each time there's a need to test UI code against new server behaviour.
This does not seem too comfortable, at least compared to our previous C/S style development.
Are there any other ways you can suggest to that will not require UI developers from installing and updating server side components on their development machine ?
Or anything else related that can simplify the development process ?
Thanks :-)
Editing in some clarifications:
I'm mostly interested in the aspects of UI coding, not UI design.
I need a lot of server interaction - getting data from RESTful web services, which are developed in parrallel - hence the need to have an up-to-date server
You haven't specified the development platform.
As far as pure HTML/JS/CSS is concerned, you don't need a server. The UI developer can fine tune UI components locally.
The moment you want to talk/integrate to Server (via AJAX, JSP, ASP...) then you need to connect a development server as now your changes have to be served by Server.
Most of UI fine tuning can also be done from Firebug
In our office when changes to styling are required we save the page as a local copy and send it to the UI designer, he makes his changes and we integrate them. So the UI designer don't have to maintain a development environment.
JSONP lets you work around the same-origin problem (with server support) -- check it out! If the front-end-in-the-browser developers are using a good framework suc as jQuery or (my favorite) Dojo, JSONP should be no harder for them than plain JSON.
Develop on a shared server, but depending on the size of the team.. that's challeging with respect to version control.
Or deploy automatically generated virtual machines with nightly builds, so the devs don't have to install, but always use a recent version.
In the case of UI developers depending on a common REST server, the UI development can be done on the local machine and the REST service should be on a central server. When changes are made to the REST service these should be deployed to the central server (when stable), so all developers can use the newest version (this also helps with testdata).
You could try using a proxy on the developer's machine where some paths redirect to the server and some paths redirect to local folders.
Hmm, I actually didn't really get any information on what kind of technology you're using. If - with UI Developers - you mean designers, which have to take care about the CSS, layout etc, then we do it the same as lud0h said. We (developers) send the UI designers a copy of the server-side produced HTML pages. They then edit the HTML pages according to accessibility guidelines, CSS and layout and send us back the outcome of their work. We use their HTML pages then for integrating them in our web applications.
If you don't just mean tuning CSS, but also to write JavaScript / Ajax functionality you HAVE to use a server with which you're communicating. As you said, normally this is done by having a local environment which is similar to the server-one. In .Net Visual Studio '08 provides an internal webserver, alternatively you have to install IIS locally. In Java environments you have to install Tomcat and related technologies. In my eyes this is a must. What you have to have is
Versioning system (CVS, SVN,...) where developers commit regularly (minutes/hours)
local environments where developers checkout the source from the repository and develop
Test server where you deploy on a daily basis (could be like daily builds) in order to test your running product
I guess this should be what a professional development environment should consist of. The difference to C/S application development is that web UI and web-client code are not that separable as a Client UI in C/S environment from the server-side. Unless you develop with technologies like GWT or Silverlight which are quite similar to C/S, just running inside the browser, but communicating over RPC calls or web services.
//Edit:
What I nearly forgot. Don't do something like developing on the server directly, meaning that all of the developers access the server's filesystem where the code, UI etc. lies!!
You can use CORS. a new technique just like Ajax, but with ability to make calls on other domains. so you will need only one UI on one server. think this can help you.
Sorry for my ignorance here, but when I hear the word webserver, I immediately imagine Apache, although I know people use Microsoft's IIS too. However since I've been hanging out here at Stackoverflow I've noticed lots of people use Glassfish.
Which made me wonder, why would I want to use Glassfish (in the sense that I'm interested, but I don't really understand why it might make my life easier). From what I read it's Sun's open-source derivate of Apache's Tomcat, thus I imagine it's a good (or great) quality product. But since I don't know its strengths and weaknesses, I don't know when it would be wise to choose Glassfish over another server. Could anyone elaborate ?
GlassFish is an Application Server which can also be used as a Web Server (Http Server).
A web Server means: Handling HTTP requests (usually from browsers).
A Servlet Container (e.g. Tomcat) means: It can handle servlets & JSP.
An Application Server (e.g. GlassFish) means: It can manage Java EE applications (usually both servlet/JSP and EJBs).
You should use GlassFish for Java EE enterprise applications.
The need for a seperate Web server is mostly needed in a production environment. You would normally find a Application server to be suffice most of your development needs. A web server is capable of holding larger number of active sessions and connections, thus providing the necessary balance without performance costs.
Stick to a simple web server if you are only working with servlets/jsps. It is also to be noted that in a netbeans environment, glassfish has better support than other App servers. In the context of eclipse though, WSAD and JBoss seem to the preferred options.
Glassfish will soon release the modular kernel.
This means that the containers you need start up and shutdown as you need them. I.e no EAR deployed, EJB container won;t start up. This seems to have made it very good for development as it can start and stop very quickly. This takes it a lot closer to development environments like Rails (where redeployment is a massive part of your development)
I have used GlassFish server for developing Web Services.
It provides a very interactive Admin Console where admin can test the Web Services.
I really find it helpful while developing Web Services