Key Technology: webMathematica Pages

webMathematica is based on two standard Java technologies: Java Servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP). Servlets are special Java programs that run in a Java-enabled web server, which is typically called a "servlet container" (or sometimes a "servlet engine"). There are many different types of servlet containers that can run on many different operating systems and architectures. The servlet containers can also be integrated into other web servers, such as the Apache web server.

webMathematica allows a site to deliver HTML pages that are enhanced by the addition of Mathematica commands. When a request is made for one of these pages, the Mathematica commands are evaluated and the computed result is inserted into the page. This is done with a standard Java technology, JSP, making use of custom tags.

webMathematica technology uses the request/response standard followed by web servers. Input can come from HTML forms, applets, JavaScript, and web-enabled applications. It is also possible to send data files to a webMathematica server for processing. Output can use many different formats such as HTML, images, Mathematica notebooks, MathML, SVG, XML, PostScript, and PDF. The webMathematica User Guide includes examples that show how to produce these formats.

webMathematica provides a large library of Mathematica commands to take care of the many possible ways of working with Mathematica computations on the web. An important part of webMathematica is the kernel manager, which calls Mathematica in a robust, efficient, and secure manner. The manager maintains a pool of one or more Mathematica kernels; by maintaining more than one kernel, the manager can process more than one request at a time.