Application Server
- There are many different ways the Application Server can be deployed.
- Most deployments involve many servers and many installations of the Application Server.
- Oracle's Application Server is J2EE compliant.
- J2EE is an application development model for building enterprise class multi-tier applications. J2EE simplifies enterprise applications by basing them on standardized, modular components, by providing a complete set of services to those components, and by handling many details of application behavior automatically without complex programming.
- Oracle's implementation of the J2EE model is called OC4j.
- At the highest level, Oracle's Application Server can be divided into two main 'products' or installation types:
- Oracle Application Server also known as the 'Oracle Application Server Middle Tier' which provides components used for application deployment.
- Oracle Application Server Infrastructure which provides Identity Management services and a Metadata Repository.
- Each installation must have its own Oracle Home. They can be done on the same server but most frequently are done on different servers.
- Some deployments of the Application Server don't use the Infrastructure.
- Considering the classical Internet-Firewall-DMZ-Firewall-Intranet, both the Application Server Middle Tier and Application Server Infrastructure are deployed in the DMZ.
- The Metadata Repository associated with the Application Server Infrastructure is a pre-configured Oracle database used to store critical metadata. It must be backed up and recovered if required.
- The following is the most common deployment of the Application Server:
In later documents I will discuss some of the important components that it was introduced in this article.
