Transaction Management and the Lightweight App Server - Pairing Atomikos with Jetty
When looking to build a web application, developers can go the traditional application server route, choosing to work with one of the large traditional app server vendors and their more costly solutions. But others prefer a more nimble approach, taking the route of a lightweight application server, which many believe provides a simpler and more streamlined way of doing development.
One such lightweight app server is Jetty from Intalio. Created more than 14 years ago, this open source solution has been downloaded and implemented in millions of domains. Jetty is an app server built in reverse. Not over engineered or architected, it is itself built as a component, and is one of the most scalable servers available today through its trailblazing implementation of asynchronous servlet facilities. Jetty is regarded in the development community as a fast and light container for development, testing and production. Originally brought to market by Webtide, the Jetty Application Server transitioned to Intalio, a VC-backed technology vendor headquartered in Palo Alto, California in September 2009 through acquisition, and is a project at the Eclipse Software Foundation.
Intalio’s interest in transaction management began some years back as the company began receiving requests from its customer base for “a couple of extra things” -- additional components to layer on top of the Jetty App Server. Customers were seeking specifically components for JMS message support, and for transaction management. Right around the time Intalio (then Webtide) began looking for a vendor partner to supply the transaction management component, transaction management vendor Atomikos began shopping the market for a lightweight app server with which to integrate. The intersection of the needs of both vendors at roughly the same time in the market made the Intalio/Atomikos partnership a match made in heaven.
Atomikos was an ideal solution for Intalio’s needs. The Jetty App Server provides an Ajax and a Comet engine, and in addition to needing transaction management, Intalio required a solution that worked with their sponsored messaging format. The decision to move ahead with Atomikos was easy. It worked, it was stable, and it had low dependencies on other open source solutions – making it a very clean and implementable answer.
The result of the pairing of Jetty, Atomikos and the JMS messaging component is a versioned distribution of Jetty called Intalio|Works Hightide, providing a comprehensive toolset for the development of highly scalable, state of the art web applications.
Intalio and Atomikos in Action
Intalio|Works Hightide with Atomikos for transaction management has recently been deployed within the UK online TV service, SeeSaw.
SeeSaw delivers a broad range of TV content for the UK market, and relies upon highly reliable and scalable software solutions to ensure quality service to potentially millions of viewers.
SeeSaw was launched on February 17, 2010 and has been well received by the UK viewing public for domestic and international broadcast content, sport and independently-produced programming. Its parent company Arqiva has extensive expertise and experience in delivering high quality content through terrestrial and satellite broadcasting in the UK. SeeSaw represents the next frontier in content delivery.
As an Intalio|Works Hightide customer, SeeSaw enjoys the benefits of a stable Jetty distribution as well as important services to speed their development efforts.
“Jetty underpins the successful launch of the SeeSaw online TV service. It provides a scalable and reliable solution, with cost effective and responsive support,” said Adam Lieber, GM, Intalio|Works. “With use of Jetty's asynchronous technologies, and Atomikos transaction management system SeeSaw can handle more users more cost effectively than any other way in a high reliability setting, and ensure the reliability of transactional business processes.”
About Intalio|Works
Intalio|Works delivers leading Enterprise applications and infrastructure including Intalio|Works BPMS and Intalio|Works Webtide. With the acquisition of Webtide LLC, Intalio offers distributions and services of the popular server and communications components Jetty and CometD, and Hightide, the versioned distribution of Jetty that includes a comprehensive toolset for the development of scalable, state-of-the-art web 2.0 applications.
About Atomikos
Atomikos is a market leader in transaction management for eXtreme Transaction Processing (XTP), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and open source environments. Atomikos’ software safeguards your critical transactions and prevents costly data loss or corruption in the event of a system failure or crash by automating the cancellation of failed business transactions.