TS WebServer is Thoroughbred’s environment for developing and running web-based business and e-commerce applications, from shopping carts to online transaction processing. Applications can be written in 3GL, 4GL or as OPENworkshop Methods.

Platform

TS WebServer is based on OPENworkshop and runs on Linux with the Apache web server, using SSL for secure transactions such as credit card payments. The Thoroughbred Web API runs as an integrated process with Apache, so it scales as traffic grows. It runs in the background with very little processor overhead and, unlike CGI scripts, does not start a task for every request.

How a request is handled

The browser sends a request to Apache with an HTML POST or GET.
Requests with a .tbred extension are passed to the Thoroughbred Apache module, mod_tbred.
mod_tbred hands the request to a designated Web Basic control program, which runs as a background process.
The control program processes the data and builds the next HTML page for the browser.

Each request is independent of the last, which makes dynamic pages straightforward. The web server can run several Web Basic processes, each watching for a different kind of request, such as general e-commerce, a shopping cart or credit card verification.

Components

Application server: your existing Thoroughbred application and data, with TS Network DataServer installed so the web server can reach the data.
Web server: TS WebServer, Linux, Apache with optional SSL, and a firewall. It can be remote from the application server as long as TCP/IP communication and security are in place. If the application server is not heavily loaded, both can share one machine, with extra security considerations.

How it fits

Thoroughbred can design an e-commerce solution for you or host it; see cloud hosting and consulting.