by The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is happy to announce an alpha
release of Jigsaw, its new object oriented server. Jigsaw is entirely
written Java, and emphasis on the object-oriented aspect of the HTTP
protocol.
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Jigsaw/
Is the corresponding new area of the consortium web site. It links to
the current distribution, and to the available documentation.
Jigsaw uses as much as possible the dynamic features of Java: each
resource exported through Jigsaw is a first-class persistent Java
object that is responsible for implementing the set of methods defined
by the HTTP protocol. These resource objects are dynamically created
either by the server itself, or by the server admin and the
appropriate classes are loaded on demand. Resources can be customized
through an HTML form-based editor. For more information on Jigsaw
current design and performances, check out:
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Jigsaw/User/Introduction/
Jigsaw administration is entirely done through HTML forms. This
includes authentication (auth realm management, etc.), resource
customization and general server properties (type of logger, server
port, etc). The current implementation provides proof of concept, we
will work on the user interface by itself. For more information on
Jigsaw administration check out:
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Jigsw/User/Administration/
By overtaking this new effort the consortium has two main goals. The
first one is to provide a replacement for the CERN-server (as a free
server, provided with source code). The second one is to provide a
framework for protocol extensions experimental implementations. Jigsaw
comes with a server-side implementation of PICS, and a prototype
implementation of the MUX protocol. More information on the goals of
Jigsaw are available from:
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Jigsaw/Activity.html
Jigsaw supports most of the common features. It is HTTP/1.0 compliant,
supports content negotiation, persistent connections, both Basic and
IP authentication and the PUT method. Among the pre-defined set of
resource classes, Jigsaw provide a CommonLog format compatible logger,
a high-level interface to forms, CGI script support, and more. For
the complete feature list, check out:
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Jigsaw/features.html
Finally, the current Jigsaw release is an alpha release, we are
waiting for your feedback and bug reports before turning it into a
beta release.
Enjoy !
Anselm Baird-Smith.