Using Developer Studio Without IIS

By Dimitris Poulos

In the February 2004 issue of the WebFOCUS Newsletter, I wrote an article titled "Using Developer Studio Without a Web Server." Information Builders has also released tech memo TM4546 with additional information on this optional configuration for standalone development purposes without a Web server.

We have continued our research in this area and have identified another solution that makes it possible for Developer Studio to function without using a Web server such as the Internet Information Services for stand-alone development.

This alternate solution is based on the Tomcat application server, which incorporated a lightweight HTTP server known as Coyote. There is no requirement to install the Apache HTTP server with this solution; Coyote is installed along with Tomcat and fulfills the need for servicing WebFOCUS static content, such as that under /ibi_html and /approot.

Tomcat is an open-source servlet engine that supports the latest JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Servlet API specifications. The Tomcat Servlet Engine is part of the Jakarta project at www.apache.org. For additional information on Tomcat please visit the site: jakarta.apache.org/tomcat.

The WebFOCUS group has tested this configuration and we are in the progress of certifying this configuration with the latest production release of Developer Studio. We have noticed advantages over the HTTP listener configuration. The configuration has better performance and does not have any of the issues and limitations common with the HTTP listener.

For the 5.x release cycle, the Tomcat solution is applicable only while developing reporting applications. It is not available for Maintain application development, since Maintain does not currently support servlets as the communication method. This, however, will change in the next major release of Developer Studio, and Maintain will include support for servlets. In addition, we plan to include Tomcat with future releases of Developer Studio and automatically perform installation and configuration if a Web server is not available on the developers PC.

Installation and configuration of Tomcat is straightforward and easy to manage. For additional information on installing and configuring Tomcat with Developer Studio, please review tech memo TM4548.