Web
sites are hosted on web servers. Similarly, WAP sites are hosted on
WAP servers. A WAP server stores the files that make up a WAP site
and handles requests from users. In the following sections, you can
learn what a WAP server is and how to set up a WAP server to publish
WAP 1.x (latest version: WAP 1.2.1) and WAP 2.0 content to users of
wireless devices.
1.1. What
is a WAP Server?
A
WAP server is just a standard web server that hosts a WAP site's
contents like WML and XHTML MP documents.
Some
companies have a "WAP server" product that is actually a
web server plus a WAP gateway. This confuses the term. So, when you
talk about WAP servers, make sure you and the one listening to you
are not referring to different things. (Note that content providers
do not need to care about the WAP gateway part typically since
mobile network operators provide a WAP gateway to their service subscribers.
However, if you are creating a secure WAP application like mobile banking,
then you need to consider whether to use you own WAP gateway.)
Two
popular web servers are Apache and IIS.
Tomcat
is a Java Servlet / JSP container that can also be used as a
standalone web server.
Apache,
IIS and Tomcat are the most commonly used software for hosting WAP /
web sites.
1.2. Apache -
Open-source, Free WAP / Web Server
Apache
is a very professional open-source WAP / web server. It can be
downloaded free of charge at the website http://httpd.apache.org/.
Apache
is available on many platforms including Microsoft Windows and Linux
/ UNIX.
PHP
is very often used with Apache for server-side scripting.
1.3. Tomcat -
Open-source, Free Java Servlet / JSP Container and Web / WAP Server
Tomcat
is mainly used to host dynamic WAP / web applications developed with
the Java Servlet or JSP (Java Server Pages) server-side
technologies.
Tomcat
can also be used to host static documents.
It
is available on many different platforms like Microsoft Windows and
Linux / UNIX.
1.4. Microsoft IIS -
Built-in Web / WAP Server of Windows
IIS
(Internet Information Services) is a web server developed by
Microsoft.
IIS
is only available on the MS Windows platform. It is bundled with
some versions of MS Windows like Windows 2000, Windows XP
Professional and Windows Server 2003.
IIS
is commonly used to host ASP applications.
ASP
(Active Server Pages) is a server-side technology developed by
Microsoft for creating dynamic WAP / web sites.