The World Wide Web
Consortium Thursday released a stable open source version of Jigsaw,
its award-winning Java Web server. Jigsaw was created so developers can
experiment with new server technologies.
The latest version of Jigsaw features an architecture which aids in the
evaluation of new Web protocols. Jigsaw also enables faster Web access by
using HTTP/1.1 along with an open source implementation of the Java servlet
interface. Jigsaw was developed using Java which means it is supported on
most platforms. Because of its smart caching mechanisms, Jigsaw is at least
as fast as the other popular Web servers.
Jigsaw was designed to simplify the process of implementing and evaluating
new ideas for Web protocols and servers; new protocol parts can be added to
the server without the need to restart it. The W3C has used Jigsaw to
evaluate many technologies, including:
- The development of new
HTTP/1.1 protocol standard – HTTP/1.1 provides significant performance
benefits over the previous version - Distributed publishing – Jigsaw
provides a simple method of publishing documents on the Web - Base for
PICS label bureau – PICS is the W3C technology for content-labeling; a
label bureau allows third parties to label Web content - RDF syntax
checker – RDF is the W3C technology for describing metadata - HTTP
extension testbed – W3C has created a framework for systematic extensions
to the HTTP protocol - Shared Web caches via IP multicast – sharing
different Web caches between users can greatly improve their performance;
Jigsaw utilizes an IP multicast-based protocol for cache sharing - Better
performance using the HTTP/1.1 Standard – users served by Jigsaw 2.0 will
welcome the performance gain provided by the HTTP/1.1 standard - Servlets
Support – Jigsaw 2.0 supports the latest version of the Java servlet API,
along with CGI scripts, server-side includes and “Jigsaw Resources”
- Easy Administration – the JigAdmin tool that comes with Jigsaw 2.0
provides administrators with control over all the resources handled by the
server and the server’s own configuration
For additional information, or to download the Jigsaw server, visit the
W3C’s Jigsaw area.