2.6. The Native Package

The Native package is an optional component for the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and incorporates JBoss Native, mod_jk, mod_cluster and ISAPI for Windows technologies. These technologies are described as follows:
  • JBoss Native consists of the Apache Portable Runtime (APR), OpenSSL and Tomcat Native (TC-native).
    • Apache Portable Runtime (APR) provides superior scalability, performance, and improved integration with native server technologies. The Apache Portable Runtime is a highly portable library that is at the heart of Apache HTTP Server 2.x and contains many uses, including access to advanced IO functionality (for example: sendfile, epoll and OpenSSL), Operating System level functionality (for example: random number generation and system status), and native process handling (shared memory, NT pipes and Unix sockets).
    • OpenSSL implements the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols and includes a basic crytographic library.
    • Tomcat Native (TC-Native) is a Java Native Interface (JNI) that provides much of Tomcats core functionality in native code rather than Java. This allows for an overall increase in the speed of a server.
  • mod_jk is a connector that is used to connect the Tomcat JSP container and different web services such as Apache.
  • mod_cluster is an httpd-based load balancer. Like mod_jk, it uses a communication channel to forward requests from httpd to an application server node. See the mod_cluster documentation available from http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/JBoss_Enterprise_Application_Platform/ for installation instructions.
  • ISAPI is a connector used to connect the Microsoft IIS web server to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

Note

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 distribution of the Native package does not contain OpenSSL or the Apache Portable Runtime since these technologies are already included in the Operating System.