The development of WEB Applications

1. at the first stage, we develop the "static. A static website stores its information in files on a web server" pages page by page, to solve the problem of "release information"

 

2. then we develop the "web applications", which generate the web pages by itself, which solve the problem of web content updates.

 

  "A web application is a computer program that users invoke by using a web browser to contact a web server via the Internet. Users and browsers are typically unaware of the difference between a web server that fronts a statically-built website and one that fronts a web application. But unlike a static website, a web application creates its “pages” dynamically, or on-the-fly, upon request. A website that is dynamically- constructed uses an a computer program to provide its content. These kinds of dynamic applications can be written in any number of computer languages" or called " dynamically-constructed website"

 

3. Web application server:

A framework that allows people to construct a web application is often called a web application server, or sometimes just an application server. Zope is a web application server, as are competing products like WebSphere, JBoss, and (to some extent) SAP NetWeaver.

Zope is a web application server, which is not a web application in itself; rather it is framework that allows people to construct web applications. Sometimes this framework is called an application server.

 

Using some common computer programming language, an application server typically allows a developer to create a web application, but it also provides services beyond the basic capabilities of the programming language used. Examples of such services are web page template creation facilities, a common security model, data persistence, sessions, and other features that people find useful when constructing a typical web application.

 

==> so what a web application server. like zope will provide?

  support a language to develop a web application

  web page template creation facilities.

  security model

  data persistence.

  sessions.

  and other features that people find useful when constructing a typical web application.

===>

 

4. application server framework

If you are considering writing even a moderately-sized web application, it is typically a good idea to start your project using an application server framework, unless your application requirements are extremely specialized. By starting a web application project with an application server framework (as opposed to a “raw” computer language, such as Java, Perl, Python, or C), you are able to utilize the services of the framework that have already been written and proven to work, and you avoid the need to write the functionality yourself “from scratch” in a “raw” language.

 

5. Content management system

Build a Content Management System – A content management system allows non-technical editors to create and manage content for your website. Application servers provide the tools with which you can build a content management system.

=> difference between application server framework and cms: needs coding or not. <==

 

6. What a Zope do

Present Dynamic Content – You may tailor your web site’s presentation to its users and provide users with search features. Application servers allow you to serve dynamic content and typically come with facilities for personalization, database integration, content indexing, and searching.

 

Manage Your Web Site – A small web site is easy to manage, but a web site that serves thousands of documents, images, and files requires heavy-duty management tools. It is useful to be able to manage your site’s data, business logic, and presentation from a single place. An application server can typically help manage your content and presentation in this way.

 

Build a Content Management System – A content management system allows non-technical editors to create and manage content for your website. Application servers provide the tools with which you can build a content management system.

 

Build an E-Commerce Application – Application servers provide a framework in which sophisticated e-commerce applications can be created.

 

Securely Manage Contributor Responsibility – When you deal with more than a handful of web users, security becomes very important. You must be able to safely delegate tasks to different classes of system users. For example, folks in your engineering department may need to be able to manage their web pages and business logic, designers may need to update site templates, and database administrators need to manage database queries. Application servers typically provide a mechanism for access control and delegation.

 

Provide Network Services – You may want to produce or consume network services. A network service-enabled web site must to be able to accept requests from other computer programs. For example, if you’re building a news site, you may wish to share your news stories with another site; you can do this by making the news feed a network service. Or perhaps you want to make products for sale on your site automatically searchable from a product comparison site. Application servers offer methods for enabling these kinds of network services.

 

Integrate Diverse Systems – Your existing content may be contained in many places: relational databases, files, separate web sites, and so on. Application servers typically allow you to present a unified view of your existing data by integrating diverse, third-party systems.

 

Provide Scalability – Application servers allow your web applications to scale across as many systems as necessary to handle the load demands of your sites.

The Zope application server allows you to perform all of these tasks.

 

7. Why use ZOPE instead of other web application servers?

If you’re in the business of creating web applications, Zope can potentially help you create them at less cost and at a faster rate than you could by using another competing web application server. This claim is backed by a number of Zope features:

• Zope is free of cost and distributed under an open-source license. There are many non-free commercial application servers that are relatively expensive.
• Zope itself is an inclusive platform. It ships with all the necessary components to begin developing an application. You don’t need to license extra software to support Zope (e.g., a relational database) in order to develop your application. This also makes Zope very easy to install. Many other application servers have “hidden” costs by requiring that you license expensive software or configure complex, third-party infrastructure software before you can begin to develop your application.
• Zope allows and encourages third-party developers to package and distribute ready-made applications. Due to this, Zope has a wide variety of integrated services and add-on packages available for immediate use. Most of these components, like Zope itself, are free and open-source. Zope’s popularity has bred a large community of application developers.
• Applications created in Zope can scale almost linearly using Zope’s built-in “Zope Enterprise Objects” (ZEO) clustering solution. Using ZEO, you can deploy a Zope application across many physical computers without needing to change much (if any) of your application code. Many application servers don’t scale quite as transparently or as predictably.
• Zope provides a granular and extensible security framework. You can easily integrate Zope with diverse authentication and authorization systems, such as LDAP, Kerberos, and RADIUS, simultaneously and using pre-built modules. Many other application servers lack support for important authentication and authorization systems.
• Zope runs on most popular microcomputer operating system platforms: Linux, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X. Many other application server platforms require that you run an operating system of their licensor’s choosing.
• Zope can be extended using the interpreted Python scripting language. Python is popular and easy to learn, and it promotes rapid development. Many libraries are available for Python that can be used when creating your own application. Many other application servers must be extended using compiled languages, such as Java, which cuts down on development speed. Many other application servers use less popular languages for which there are not as many ready-to-use library features.