Chapter 2 '

Web Applications

The World Wide Web is the largest distributed application in the world.
Currently, however, nonstandardized and inflexible HTML interfaces are
the main technique used to access the wealth of c o m p o n e n t s ~ W e b
s i t e s ~ o u t there. Although these interfaces are relatively easy to use for
humans, they are not suitable for building complex applications. One of
the current efforts to improve this situation are so-called Web services. Web
services are aimed at establishing a uniform infrastructure for the descrip-
tion and registration of Web-based services and for providing access to
these components.
Web applications However, the big challenge in the development of a Web application is
with Java still the building and integration of local components, where local means
"belonging to a single Web provider." There are currently many frame-
works and libraries devised to make it easier for lava programmers to
develop Web applications. For example, the large Apache 1 project Jakarta
[URL:]akarta] includes many small projects, considering the wide range of
aspects involved in Web programming. The technical basis for all kinds of
different efforts are still primarily servlets and lava Server Pages (]SPs).
Hunter and Crawford [01] and Pekowsky [00] provide two examples of text-
books introducing these technologies.
How this chapter The fact that, similarly to E]Bs, servlets require the context of a server
is organized makes testing on unit level a costly venture. Fortunately, the servlet API is
much more transparent and easier to isolate. This chapter attempts to

1. The Apache Software Foundation hosts and drives a lot of open source projects. It's best
known for the Apache Web Server.