URL-Dispatching

Overview

The Resin server is really many applications in one. The primary application is a JSP/servlet engine designed to compile and execute server-side code. Coupled with the engine is a full-featured Web server, which handles serving up HTML static pages as well as passing JSP/servlet requests to the Resin engine. The Resin Web server can serve pages faster than some other Web servers, but this isn't always enough to convince an IT department to switch away from another server application.

In this chapter, we look at the interface between Resin and several external servers, including Apache, Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), and Netscape's iPlanet. We also take a look at using other server-side languages—like PHP and Perl. In addition, we discuss a Web-based authoring and versioning system called WebDav.

Let's start off with a look at how a plug-in interfaces Resin with an external server.