Dossy wrote on 5/20/04, 3:06 PM:
> The ultimate goal is to have Java as capable and efficient of a runtime
> environment for server-side functionality as Tcl is. The current effort
> is going into the nsjk2 module, integrating the Tomcat engine. I know
> that Elizabeth Thomas is actively working on this effort and I'm hoping
> that she can get some help and support from everyone here to move that
> along quickly.
First off, I'm very excited about Dossy's new role. It's great news for
the AOLserver project. I would also like to take this opportunity to
introduce Timothy Suh, who is on our team here at AOL and is also
working on nsjk2.
For the benefit of any newcomers, nsjk2 is a module which provides the
ability to run the Tomcat servlet container with AOLserver (much like it
is done with Apache). Tomcat can run either in the AOLserver process
(recommended) or out-of-process. With nsjk2, you can have an AOLserver
fielding requests for 'traditional' aolserver pages and as well as JSPs
and servlets. Its javatclbridge utilities enable your java pages access
to tcl and adp processing which allow you to leverage existing
AOLserver-based infrastructure. As AOL has a large AOLserver-based
investment, this bridging ability is a critical driver for our interest
in nsjk2 for those projects which, for various reasons, choose a
java-based implementation. This investment includes not only the
services coded in ADP/TCL, but also our operational administration and
configuration built around AOLserver. Strategically, the future of
AOLserver/Tomcat is somewhat uncertain - it will simply depend on who
finds it useful. However, there has been a great deal of interest in it
here.
We are currently working on the following enhancements to nsjk2. These
are driven from requirements of internal projects at AOL.
1. Tomcat 5 support
This is nearly done. In fact, if you check out the head of the CVS
tree for nsjk2, you should be able to run nsjk2 with Tomcat 5. The main
trunk is forming the basis for an upcoming v2 release.
For now, Tomcat 4 compatibility with only be supported on the (new) v1
branch (until such time that we can make v2 backward compatible). We
will backport the new features described below to the v1 branch as well.
nsjk2_v1_r4 has been tagged (but not yet posted on sourceforge) - it
consists of just a minor fix to the java NsLog bridge to automatically
load the correct library.
2. Java-implemented tcl commands
We have a requirement to allow a tcl command to be implemented in java
and available from the AOLserver tcl interps - this is particularly
useful for administrative commands to be made available in the aolserver
control port. This is not a full 'calling java from tcl' approach a la
tclBlend, but more along the lines of how we implement tcl commands in
C. The command is implemented in java, and exposed through creating a
tcl command API. (Note that this does not prohibit future integration of
tclBlend should someone be so motivated :) )
3. Java-controlled logging.
Tomcat and AOLserver have separate logging mechanisms, which is often
undesirable to Operations, which wishes a single log (or single logging
configuration mechanism). The existing NsLog class in the javatclbridge
allows java code to log via the AOLserver Ns_Log mechanism. However, we
have projects that wish to control all their logging on the Java side
using facilities like log4j. To enable this, we are adding the ability
in AOLserver for a module to 'take over' the Ns_Log functionality by
registering callbacks.
The final completion of all these items is scheduled for late July,
although you are likely to see them 'trickle in' to the baseline between
now and then. In the process, we'll also be looking for and addressing
issues that might affect AOLserver/Tomcat's viability in a production
environment.
We are excited to hear about people's experiences with this combo and
welcome any additional fixes/enhancements that others are able to
contribute.
-Elizabeth
--
AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/
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