Building Scalable and High-Performance Java™ Web Applications Using J2EE™ Technology

The Internet Medium

Six attributes of the Internet as a medium compound the challenge of delivering performance and scalability. The better we understand and appreciate these attributes, the more strategic we can be in meeting the challenge to build Web applications that perform and scale well.

First, as mentioned earlier, there is potentially a wide audience for Web application providers to manage—wider than in any other medium. Second, the Web is an interactive medium: Consumers not only receive information, they also submit it. Third, the Internet is dynamic in the sense that a given user request does not always result in the same server-side response. Fourth, the Internet as a utility is always on and providers have no guarantees about when ...