Netscape Application Server-- About Netscape Application Server Architecture

Administration Guide
Overview Guide
Installation Guide


The Administrative Server
The Administrative Server enables administration of one or more Netscape Application Servers. It registers with the appropriate server or servers all changes made to the system and application settings using the Netscape Application Server Administrator. The Administrative Server also hosts the failure recovery service that restarts the other server processes if they become unavailable. This failure-recovery service provides a high degree of fault tolerance for the Netscape Application Server. The Executive Server The Executive Server is the main engine in the Netscape Application Server. The Executive Server is responsible for hosting many of the system-level services as they are needed by the server. The Executive Server process also distributes application requests to the appropriate application process, either the Java Server or C++ Server process. For example, when an application request comes into the Netscape Application Server The Executive Server invokes the request manager, a system-level service The request manager assigns a thread to the request and forwards the request to the appropriate application process, which is either the Java Server or the C++ Server When the request manager is finished, it is dismissed from the Executive Server, providing a dynamic-usage model for increased server performance. The Java Server and C++ Server The Java Server and C++ Server processes are the application servers. AppLogic objects written in Java are hosted in the Java Server and AppLogic objects written in C++ are hosted in the C++ Server. AppLogic objects are the core of the application, holding the compiled code instructions written by the developer. The Java Server and C++ Server processes also host the application-level services. These services are dynamically loaded into the appropriate process as needed by the AppLogic object. For example, when a Java AppLogic object requires access to a database, the Java Server loads in the data access engine, uses its services, and then dismisses it. The database connection provided by the data access engine is cached in the Java Server active memory. If another request enters the system and accesses the same database, the cached connection is used alleviating the need to invoke the data access engine and increasing the performance of the request processing. For more information about the application-level services, see "Application-Level Services."