Re: [ProgSoc] Servlets

[Telford Tendys <telford@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

On Fri, Feb 02, 2001 at 05:15:21AM +1100, Suresh Rajagopalan wrote:
> What a long email. Will try my best to answer your questions.
>   
> The port i am using is 9090.

cool, remember that the exec need to know about all listner ports.

> I am running LWS in my own instance. It will not affect
> other users.

other than the port usage.

> The server has its own config, in which
> I must configure to run my servlets, jsp's or beans.

> Servlets act as an extension to the webserver, there are no security
> problems
> with servlets, the JVM takes care of it. If you plan to install
> a servlet/jsp engine, I suggest Tomcat. I put LWS on my account
> because its small and easy to install/configure.

You can't just blithely say there are no security problems because
the JVM takes care of it... what about the points that I was asking?

* How does a servlet get write access local files (if at all)? 
* How to control which local files it can access?
* How can it do mysql queries?
* Is it possible for a local user to read the servlet code
  and extract mysql passwords?

> You can think of a servlet as a server side applet, but the gui part of it
> being a web page.

So how is this different from a regular CGI?

> A JSP is really a servlet, it gets converted from
> JSP to servlet at runtime, by a servlet engine.

This doesn't help me much, because I've never used a JSP.
My understanding is that the client (i.e. browser) sends a
URL along with either GET or POST data (containing form parameters)
to the web server which then runs some program to process
the data and return HTML back to the browser. This is what
CGI programs do and I'm wondering if there is anything different
about servlets which makes them need to be handled differently.

> A couple of people have 
> requested me for instructions on setting  up LWS. I suggest if people
> in progsoc are interested in servlet technology, it would be worthwile
> if we had a common servlet engine running on progsoc. rather than
> individuals
> setting up there own servers, and then we loose control of open ports.

Well if you want Tomcat then we have to compile it together with
Apache which means being very careful not to break what we already
have (also Apache gets bigger and slower than it already is, but
could lugging a JVM around actually be much worse than lugging a
PHP interpreter like we already do <sigh>) at any rate my personal
priorities are getting backups working (which probably requires a
shuffle of /export/cats), getting jubilex working and getting the
SS2000 working.

> Personally, i would appreciate if you didnt shut down my port.

That's OK, keep using 9090

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