An Application Server specifically designed for the needs of business applications on the Internet.

The WAA allows business logic written in Xbase⁺⁺, Alaska Software's next generation Xbase development package, to be deployed on the web. This largely broadens up the scope of deployment opportunities for Xbase applications and is another step in Alaska Software's continued efforts to give users and developers of Xbase technologies a smooth migration path to future oriented technologies and platforms.

The WAA is able to dynamically load and unload so-called packages, DLLs developed with Xbase⁺⁺, containing business logic and application rules. It's started once and then runs in 24x7 mode serving any number of attached web clients. To realize that, it's not attached directly to the web server but talks to the web server via a small CGI gateway program, responsible for exchanging information between the web server and the WAA. This solves the most critical limitation of traditional CGI based web applications: The limited scalability due to the fact, that each added web client invokes another copy of the corresponding full blown CGI application. (see also Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 below).

Fig. 1: Traditional CGI application

Fig. 2: Web Application Adaptor

The Web Application Adaptor also leverages all the known benefits of Xbase⁺⁺ like automatic garbage collection, ease of use and automatic multithreading, fully exploiting the capabilities of modern 32 bit systems and underlying hardware, especially SMP environments (Symmetric Multi Processing). This makes the WAA an ideal platform for critical business applications on the web. Another interesting aspect of the WAA is the close compatibility of Xbase⁺⁺ with CA-Clipper. Clipper users now have the option not only to migrate from text mode and 16-bit DOS to GUI and 32-bit systems like Windows NT/2000/XP and Windows 95/98/ME but also to migrate their legacy Clipper code to the WAA and the Internet with a browser front-end.

The WAA installation comes with the necessary CGI gateways for Win32, relevant online documentation and sample packages with source code and HTML pages, including a package that lets users publish and maintain all their databases over the Internet, that are accessible from within Xbase⁺⁺. To enable users to immediately test the WAA in a complete web environment, the WAA installation package also includes free versions of the Apache web server for Win32.

It runs on Windows NT/2000/XP and Windows 95/98/ME and requires a pentium machine with minimum 16MB of RAM and 10MB free diskspace as a server machine. On the client side every HTML-capable browser will do. In order to enhance the included sample packages or to build own custom packages for usage with the WAA, a development license of Xbase⁺⁺ for Windows NT/2000/XP or Windows 95/98/ME is required.