Universal web application server

Abstract

The growth of the World Wide Web has in large part been made possible by the technologies that power it. These are the Web servers and Web browsers that many take for granted. Each has evolved to support the changing needs of users of the WWW from simple static text to highly interactive and dynamic multimedia. The Web servers, in particular, have evolved into a spectrum of different technologies to support what are now known as Web applications. These are usually installed and accessed through a Web server. Security is a problem in Web server environments and therefore the Web servers are usually run as an un-privileged user. Performance is another problem as some of these technologies require re-initialization of the execution environment with every subsequent request. These security and performance shortcomings have been dealt with by numerous Web application technologies.