WebSphere Application Server
Overview
 
IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS), a software application server
Application server
An application server is a software framework that provides an environment in which applications can run, no matter what the applications are or what they do...

, is the flagship product within IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

's WebSphere
IBM WebSphere
IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create applications and integrate applications with other applications...

 brand. It was initially created by Donald Ferguson, who later became CTO of CA Technologies, and the first version launched in 1998.
WAS is built using open standard
Open standard
An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....

s such as Java EE
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is widely used platform for server programming in the Java programming language. The Java platform differs from the Java Standard Edition Platform in that it adds libraries which provide functionality to deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, multi-tier...

, XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

, and Web Services
Web service
A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...

. It is supported on the following platforms: Windows, AIX, Linux, Solaris, i/OS and z/OS
WebSphere Application Server for z/OS
IBM WebSphere Application Server for z/OS is one of the platform implementations of IBM's WebSphere Application Server family. The current version is Version 8.0....

. Beginning with Version 6.1 and now into Version 8, the open standard specifications are aligned and common across all the platforms. Platform exploitation, to the extent it takes place, is done below the open standard specification line.

It works with a number of Web server
Web server
Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....

s including Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...

, Netscape Enterprise Server
Netscape Enterprise Server
Netscape Enterprise Server was a web server developed originally by Netscape Communications Corporation. The product has since been renamed Sun Java System Web Server, reflecting the product's acquisition by Sun Microsystems...

, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...

 (IIS), IBM HTTP Server
IBM HTTP Server
IBM HTTP Server is a web server based on the Apache Software Foundation's Apache HTTP Server that runs on AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, Windows NT, and z/OS. It is available for and use free of charge but without IBM support. The HTTP server is also included in the IBM WebSphere Application Server...

 for i5/OS, IBM HTTP Server for z/OS
Z/OS
z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for mainframe computers, produced by IBM. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn followed a string of MVS versions.Starting with earliest:*OS/VS2 Release 2 through Release 3.8...

, and IBM HTTP Server for AIX
AIX operating system
AIX AIX AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced "a i ex" is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms...

/Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

/Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

/Solaris.
 
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