Peter Kobak

With the release of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition, Java-based Web application servers are gaining in popularity. Although application servers have been around for a few years, they forced programmers to be tied to a proprietary API. Support of J2EE by application server vendors standardizes the API we write to, easing training, staffing and support costs. Perhaps most important in our dynamic Web vendor environment, writing code to an industry standard reduces the huge risk a customer takes in choosing a particular vendor should that vendor disappear. In this article I'll explain the basics of Java servlet sessions and why careful monitoring of your sessions will be important in a large site using multiple application servers. Then I'll present a simple utility to check your servlet sessions. Application Servers What is a Web "application server"? Although... (more)