If you’re the type that likes to get under the hood and really understand what’s going on, there’s a wealth of information available on the web about these components and their roles in a web application.

The Tomcat Servlet/JSP container and Apache HTTP Server are open source software projects supported by the Apache Software foundation. They are used in production at sites around the world and web sites such as Walmart.com and The Weather Channel use Tomcat for the servlet container. PTC uses the Apache/Tomcat combination because they provide high performance, are readily available on multiple platforms and freely distributable according to the Apache License. PTC also supports some commercial web servers and servlet containers. The current list can be found here in the Software Matrices.

Aphelion LDAP is a commercial application but the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol standard itself is open. The full details of the LDAP standard can be found in RFC3377. There is an open source implementation of LDAP called Open LDAP and the online documentation has some good information on directory services and what LDAP is. Pro/INTRALINK can be configured to connect to any corporate LDAP to authenticate users but Aphelion is still required to store application specific information such as groups and other information.

Even if you don’t take the time to read all of the details, these web sites will help you understand why these components are needed for Pro/INTRALINK. They will also give you some insight into the tremendous scalability of an application built on a web architecture.

If you have any questions or comments on this blog, please post a thread in the Install forum. I will respond as soon as I can.

Wally McGuire

Sr Windchill Specialist