Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP-CVS] cvs: php4 / TODO From: Matt McClanahan (cardinal <email protected>)
Date: 10/12/00

On Thu, 12 Oct 2000 eschmid+sic <email protected> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 12, 2000 at 09:32:03PM +0200, Sebastian Bergmann wrote:
> > Chuck Hagenbuch wrote:
> > > > much leaner and nicer :-) Maybe that one'll be me, if I find the time.
> > >
> > > Great!
> >
> > Doh'! *g*
> >
> > > Could someone define what an application server is? I hear it all the
> > > time these days, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to provide for
> > > me...
> >
> > Isn't Zope an application server? I think heard the term in that context
> > once. Hm. Anyone?
>
> No. An Application Service Provider or for short an ASP is something like
> an service provider which uses LAMP. This definition from the German
> publisher means Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Unfortunately they
> substituted PHP with Perl in one of the last issues of the magazin iX.

There's a distinction between an application server and an ASP, however.
As I understand it, an ASP is often a company or group that provides the
applications. You've seen the ads. "We enable fast and powerful
Internet commerce for your business", etc. All those great buzzwords. An
application server typically implies an actual product which provides, in
one package, all the functions required to build a web-based app, or suite
of apps.

Looking to the Java servlet world for examples, Enhydra is an application
server, while Tomcat is not. Tomcat is a servlet engine (And PHP is a PHP
engine), whereas Enhydra builds on Tomcat, providing whatever that other
stuff is that makes it an application server. :)

Matt 

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