Network
Auditing, UK
"I had previously developed with VBSF and have been actively helping develop VBSF into the most efficient object mapping tool on the market. A busy
web site demands a modular application and by using VBSF we have been able to build this site with the future in mind. Not only have we been able to build it very quickly,
but we have also avoided using J2EE bean persistence, which we believe to actually be less flexible than the VBSF approach."
John Baker
Senior Technical Consultant
Network Auditing, UK
About Network Auditing
Network Auditing was founded to highlight the huge security risks in
virtually all business networks, from SME's to large corporations. Their innovative
website offers a free security scan, with facilities for small businesses
who wish to get further low cost scanning and reporting, to larger
businesses who may wish someone to come and audit their own networks.
Many businesses simply plug in a Broadband connection and assume just
because they have a firewall, everything is secure. Most do not have any
real security policy in place and many IT staff are simply not up to the
job of locking down servers. Some people do not even realize that their
router is probably still configured with the default manufacturers login
details, if they even realize they have a router at all.
Network Auditing aims to assist businesses in the education of network
security and ongoing
network auditing as these concerns grow in the eyes of the public.
Software Architecture
The Network Auditing software architecture consists of the
Tomcat 4.x web server, an Apache front end, and a MySQL server for the
database engine. By picking the best parts of Tomcat, J2EE, Struts, JSTL
and our own code written in Java 1.4, combined with a fantastic web
author, we have achieved a website that adheres to strict XHTML complete
with a high degree of CSS in order to make the site easily maintainable
for the developer.
One of our challenges was to adapt VBSF's Server Threading model so it
worked well with the web engine, which caches threads rather than
disposing of them when it completes a request. We were very excited to be
able to examine the VBSF sources in order to see how Objectmatter had
implemented their threading system, while also examining the Tomcat
engine, to find a solution where by both applications worked together
efficiently. After
various solutions were tested, we found the Weak References system within
VBSF to be the best solution. This has made VBSF extremely flexible in any
system where you can not guarantee the way in which threads will be used.
With each thread having a connection to the database, it's also a very
easy system to configure.
We think our architecture demonstrates how the object mapping systems
prescribed by Sun in their J2EE specification are not always the best
solution, and a product such as VBSF is well worth a try. Network Auditing
realizes that a service may appear overnight and that it must be in a
position to develop new functionality in a small time frame. With VBSF at
its core, we believe the system developed will help achieve this goal.
Further Information
Network
Auditing Home Page
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