Web and Database Development Environment Service Description
The Computer Support Group (CSG) is providing servers named
webdev.cs.uiowa.edu and dbdev.cs.uiowa.edu configured for web and
database programming/development for use in support of courses taught
by members of the departments of Computer Science, Mathematics, and
Statistics and Actuarial Science. The instructor should request access
to the environment prior to the start of the course to verify that
planned homework/projects will work in the environment. When requesting
course accounts at the beginning of the semester, please include "setup
on the webdev/dbdev environment will be required for the course" to
your request.
Sometime during the week after grades are submitted for the semester,
all directories in /var/web/user/ will be cleaned up and all databases
will be removed. If instructors would like to continue to have access
between semesters, please let us know.
Web Programming Environment
Each user that is configured for the web programming environment will be given a directory named /var/web/user/<divmsid> on webdev.cs.uiowa.edu. The url http://webdev.cs.uiowa.edu/~divmsid/ will correspond to that directory. Within /var/web/user/divmsid there are several sub-directories (replace "divmsid" below with your actual divms user id):
perl - all files in this directory named with the .pl ending will be run via mod_perl
These files will be accessed at http://webdev.cs.uiowa.edu/~divmsid/perl/php - all files in this directory named with the .php ending will be run via php
These files will be accessed at http://webdev.cs.uiowa.edu/~divmsid/php/python - all files in this directory named with the .py ending will be run via mod_python
These files will be accessed at http://webdev.cs.uiowa.edu/~divmsid/python/tomcat5 - This directory is a single context of a Tomcat 5.x java Servlet/JSP container. It is accessed via http://webdev.cs.uiowa.edu/divmsid-tomcat5/
tomcat6 - This directory is a single context of a Tomcat 6.x java Servlet/JSP container. It is accessed via http://webdev.cs.uiowa.edu/divmsid-tomcat6/
Database environment
Each user that is configured for the web programming environment will also be given a separate database running on both MySQL 5.0.x and PostgreSQL 8.1.x on dbdev.cs.uiowa.edu. The database name, user name and password will be given to the instructor when the environment is configured. For security purposes, connections to the databases are only allowed from the campus network.
Other software
The Google Web Toolkit
has been installed and is available for use on webdev.cs.uiowa.edu. In
order to use the Toolkit generated code on the webdev environment,
you'll need to copy the contents of the war directory into /var/web/user/divmsid/tomcat6/
For example, in following the tutorial Creating an Application from Scratch (without Eclipse), use the following steps (change divmsid to your actual divms user id:
- Create a dummy application:
webAppCreator -out MyApplication com.mycompany.MyApplication - Run:
cd MyApplication - Build the application by running:
ant - Empty out the tomcat 6 directory before deploying:
rm -rf /var/web/user/divmsid/tomcat6/* - Deploy the application:
cp -a war/* /var/web/user/divmsid/tomcat6/ - Browse to the newly deployed application at http://webdev.cs.uiowa.edu/divmsid-tomcat6/
- Read the Google Web Toolkit Tutorials for more information and examples
Notes for instructors
There are a variety of sample scripts/programs that have been written that are included in each of the directories. Most of these use each language and make a database connection. If there's an example that you would like to add, please send an email to request to coordinate the inclusion of the example. Each course will have its own instance of tomcat5 and tomcat6. As the instructor, you will have the ability to restart both via sudo. We can also set up a cron job to automatically restart them every 15 minutes.
