ActiveGrid Lights Up LAMP Stack With Some Java


The LAMP stack, which consists of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl/Python, is
a standard application stack for open source Web 2.0 developers. It’s not so
standard, apparently, when it comes to enterprise deployments where J2EE (now
Java EE) lives.


That may be on the verge of changing, if Peter Yared, a former CTO at Sun and
now the CEO of ActiveGrid has anything to do with it.


ActiveGrid released its enterprise LAMP application server and Application Builder products last year, and has since upgraded both to version 2.0.
ActiveGrid Studio 2.0 is a developer tool for enterprise Web 2.0 application
development that brings AJAX and mashup capabilities to enterprise
deployment. ActiveGrid Server 2.0 is the application server part of the
equation and provides a platform for LAMP deployment.


As opposed to the 1.0 versions, the ActiveGrid 2.0 versions will also run on
top of a Java infrastructure as well, for a LAMP on Java (J2EE/Java EE)
deployment.


“What we’ve done with our 2.0 product line is capture the best of LAMP and
let you deploy it on your Java infrastructure,” Yared told
internetnews.com.


In fact, ActiveGrid users can build their application in scripting languages
such as PHP, Perl, Python or Java and then deploy to either an Apache HTTP
server or to a J2EE server such as BEA WebLogic, IBM Websphere or JBoss.


The inclusion of Java as a deployment technology is a necessary support for
ActiveGrid’s LAMP products. Yared explained that since the 1.0 releases,
ActiveGrid engaged on a number of a accounts and built applications
successfully, but kept on running into the same obstacle.


“Where we started to run into a lot of hurdles was on the deployment side
where a lot of these places didn’t have the LAMP servers approved yet in
their deployment architectures,” Yared said. “The ability to deploy within
their existing Java infrastructure is definitely a big plus.”


Another big plus according to Yared would be if Sun actually did open source
Java. Yared is an active proponent of the open sourcing of Java and sent an
open letter to Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz earlier this year requesting
that Sun do so.


“We think it would be great if all the primary scripting languages PHP, Python, Perl, and Ruby even could run on top of the JVM (Java virtual machine),” Yared said. “People have tried to get the scripting languages to
run on top of the JVM. The communities themselves build their own virtual
machines. Mainly because they are open source technologies and people don’t
want to run them on top of a proprietary code base.”


At JavaOne this year Sun actually did indicate that the JVM would be open
sourced, though it hasn’t actually happened yet. Sun also improved
the license
under which Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) 5.0 is
distributed so that Linux distributions could more easily include it.


Running LAMP on Java, though, isn’t quite the same as running LAMP natively on
its own. Yared admitted that it is in fact slower.


“The main reason is that the JVM is not as good or efficient at dealing with
dynamic languages,” Yared explained. “That is supposed to be fixed in the
upcoming Java 6 release, called Mustang.

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