JavaCGIBridge Communications Framework

Writing Java Front-Ends To Web Servers, CGI Programs, & Java Servlets

Gunther Birznieks <gunther@clark.net>
Last Updated: August 23, 1998
Table Of Contents

Introduction

Due to a combination of a stringent security model and the relatively short time the Java language has existed, applets have limited options to communicate with other processes and databases on a distributed network. CORBA, RMI, JDBC, or proprietary socket communications tend to either be highly browser dependent, have less than optimal communications/library size overhead, or run into security obstacles such as firewall compatibility.

One alternative to these heavy communications layer is a simple Applet to HTTP/CGI script communications framework. The JavaCGIBridge framework was written with the purpose of providing this alternative in a programmer-friendly way.

I originally wrote a simple version of this framework, in July of 1997. In August 1997, I presented it in front of a huge audience at the first O'Reilly Perl Conference as part of the "Perl and Other Environments Track". Since then, many people downloaded this library and contributed ideas. However, I never actually proceeded with an update because there was so much I wanted to do and so little time in which to do it.

Finally, in May 1998, I was given permission by Johns Hopkins University to finish my Master's degree via an Independent Study Program under the guidance of Marty Hall (author of Core Web Programming). Writing version 2.0 of JavaCGIBridge to accommodate more sophisticated distributed java programming patterns such as asynchronous communications, distributed callbacks, and partial processing, became the focus on my study for Summer 1998. What you see here is a result of that work.

Examples

JavaCGIBridge Documentation

Download JavaCGIBridge

[TAR] javacgibridge.tar
[CMP] javacgibridge_tar.gz

Acknowledgements

There are many people who have contributed to ideas and feedback over the last year that JavaCGIBridge v1.0 has been out.

However, the people who have contributed most directly to my efforts here are Peter Chines, Anthony Masiello, Joseph Ryan, Mark McDonald, Erik Ferlanti, and Selena Sol.

In addition, I would like to acknowledge Marty Hall under whom I was able to write version 2.0 through the Johns Hopkins University Computer Science Master's Degree program. Without his guidance and motivation to complete this project, JavaCGIBridge v2.0 might still be just a bunch of cool ideas on paper.

Gunther Birznieks <gunther@clark.net>