servlet

Some programs, often those that access databases based on user input, need to be on the server. Typically, these have been implemented using a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) application. However, with a Java running in the server, such programs can be implemented with the Java programming language. The advantage of a Java servlet on servers with lots of traffic is that they can execute more quickly than CGI applications. Rather than causing a separate program process to be created, each user request is invoked as a thread in a single daemon process, meaning that the amount of system overhead for each request is slight.

Instead of a URL that designates the name of a CGI application (in a "cgi-bin" subdirectory), a request in a form on a Web HTML page that results in a Java servlet getting called would call a URL that looks like this:

   http://www.whatis.com:8080/servlet/gotoUrl?http://www.someplace.com

The "8080" port number in the URL means the request is intended directly for the Web server itself. The "servlet" would indicate to the Web server that a servlet was being requested.

Add-on modules allow Java servlets to run in Netscape Enterprise, Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), and Apache servers.

Read more about servlet: - Servlet Central , an online magazine devoted to Java server-side topics, includes some how-to papers. - Sun's article, Inside the Java Web Server , includes a discussion of the Servlet API. - Sun also offers a home page for the Servlet API .

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