Us, Them, and AOL in the Middle
By Bob Kaehms
Application servers come in all sizes and shapes. What was once a process that allowed a few first-generation Webmasters and environment variables access to the
operating system has morphed into an entire industry that competes in the same arena as client/server tool vendors. It's gotten so that anything that sits between a dumb browser and a back-end data source is called an
application server.
Application servers solve the darnedest problems! And what's more, they're getting darned expensive!
So I asked someone I trust at a large
application server company why there were so many on the market, and why people are willing to pay the money they do.
"Fear," he replied nonchalantly.
"But aren't these things just a bunch of
services that sit on front-end preprocessors to back-end data sources?"
"Yep."
"What makes them special?"
"They force developers into a well-defined architecture, cynics would say, so they don't have to think creatively for themselves.
Others argue that their importance is that they make the overall system more
manageable. Reasons aside, there is still much programming and development
required once you choose an architecture by selecting an application server."
"Do you think these things will ever end up back in the core operating system..
