There are benefits to running secure production WebClient/Websydian applications under a combination of both Tomcat and Apache. This configuration can be the highest performance option, and can be run under SSL for security. Tomcat and Apache are both free, open source software that are proven in high performance production environments. While lacking some of the management features of advanced web application servers like IBM Websphere, the reduced cost mitigate this in many cases.
The following diagram depicts a high-level view of the architecture:
There are two major components in the setup: the Apache web server and a Tomcat servlet container.
Apache is a fully-featured web server, meaning it has the ability to serve static pages to users while offering a variety of options that provide value in web environments. Strictly a web server, it has no ability to serve dynamic pages, in other words, content that changes with user input or other sources of data. Dynamic pages might be implemented with Apache by using different mechanisms like modules to allow execution of languages like PHP and Perl. In this scenario, the mod_jk module is used to connect Apache with an existing Tomcat installation, obtaining the equivalent result of enabling Apache to serve dynamic pages but with help from an external service.
A web client is defined as a single user requesting content from a web server. The web server will handle requests and return a response for each client’s request. This is the basic interaction between clients and servers in web applications. In this setup, web clients will be able to establish a secure communications channel between them and the server by using the HTTPS (HTTP over SSL) protocol. HTTPS support is provided by mod_ssl, an extension module for the Apache Web Server.
View all the details on the setup here.
