WebSphere sMash was a development and runtime environment from
IBM for the creation of dynamic
web applications using the
scripting languages
Apache Groovy and
PHP. It contained a PHP
runtime written in
Java.
Project Zero was the experimental software development community in which new versions of
WebSphere sMash were incubated. WebSphere sMash was withdrawn from sale in 2012, with support discontinued in 2014.
WebSphere Smash integrated with
Eclipse
An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...
and produced
REST-style services on top of Groovy or PHP
.
Architecture
There are a number of distinguishing aspects to the architecture of WebSphere sMash.
Event-driven programming model
WebSphere sMash uses an
event-driven programming model. Applications are typically composed of a number of small modules which communicate with each other by firing events which are then caught by other handlers that have registered to catch the events. The code firing the event does not have any knowledge of the code that will handle the event. This architecture allows application to be built up from a mixture of code written using
PHP,
Java,
Groovy or the Flow language.
Global context
Since events are
stateless, a mechanism is required to share data between event handlers. This mechanism is the Global Context. The Global context functions basically as a large map of data divided up into various zones with different lifetimes, properties and persistence.
Repository management system
sMash makes use of the
Ivy dependency manager. sMash applications are composed of models which can specify dependencies on other modules which may be present in a local Ivy repository or which can be fetched from a remote repository. IBM maintains a repository of useful modules at projectzero.org and dependencies can also be specified on the maven2 repository.
PHP support
The
PHP support in WebSphere sMash is provided by a PHP runtime implemented in Java.
PHP scripts are compiled into
Java bytecode which then run on the
Java Virtual Machine (
JVM). This is similar in concept to the approach taken by other projects such as
JRuby and
Jython
Jython is an implementation of the Python programming language designed to run on the Java platform. The implementation was formerly known as JPython until 1999.
Overview
Jython programs can import and use any Java class. Except for some standa ...
, which run the
Ruby and
Python languages, respectively, against the JVM. Running on the JVM allows direct, same process calls between PHP, Java and Groovy code allowing applications to be assembled using a variety of languages.
In contrast to the approach taken by Quercus, the other JVM based PHP implementation, sMash is able to re-use existing PHP extensions from PHP.net attaching them to the Java virtual machine via the Java Native Interface (JNI) and an API layer called XAPI-C.
The runtime has a DBGp debug port allowing debug access from IDEs and debuggers which support the DBGp protocol such as the
Eclipse
An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...
PDT project.
The PHP runtime does not have an identity outside of sMash so it is simply referred to as the "WebSphere sMash runtime for PHP."
As of October 2008 WebSphere sMash is capable of running several well-known PHP applications on a Java Virtual Machine. These include
SugarCRM,
,
and
MediaWiki.
The PHP runtime supports close integration with the Java and Groovy languages through its Java/Groovy bridge. This allows PHP scripts to use libraries written in Java and Groovy through a lightweight and extremely fast interop layer. The Groovy bridge allows advanced features from Groovy to be accessed directly from PHP. Examples include
closures and Groovy
metaobjects.
See also
*
PHP/Java Bridge
*
pureQuery
*
Quercus
References
External links
OSS Developers: Project Zero Aims for Next-Gen Web Applications*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20110524073941/http://www.projectzero.org/sMash/1.1.x/docs/zero.devguide.doc/zero.data/overview.html sMash data access with pureQuery
{{PHP
IBM WebSphere
PHP software
Web frameworks
Discontinued software