WebSphere sMash was a development and runtime environment from IBM for the creation of dynamic

web applications A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

using the

scripting language A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripti ...

s Apache Groovy and

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

. It contained a PHP runtime written in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

. 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 WebSphere sMash was withdrawn from sale in 2012, with support discontinued in 2014.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 Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and ente ...

-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 In computer programming, event-driven programming is a programming paradigm in which the flow of the program is determined by events such as user actions (mouse clicks, key presses), sensor outputs, or message passing from other programs or th ...

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

Groovy ''Groovy'' (or, less commonly, ''groovie'' or ''groovey'') is a slang colloquialism popular during the 1950s, '60s and '70s. It is roughly synonymous with words such as "excellent", "fashionable", or "amazing", depending on context. History The ...

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

support in WebSphere sMash is provided by a PHP runtime implemented in Java. PHP scripts are compiled into

Java bytecode In computing, Java bytecode is the bytecode-structured instruction set of the Java virtual machine (JVM), a virtual machine that enables a computer to run programs written in the Java programming language and several other programming languages, ...

which then run on the

Virtual Machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized har ...

( JVM). This is similar in concept to the approach taken by other projects such as

JRuby JRuby is an implementation of the Ruby programming language atop the Java Virtual Machine, written largely in Java. It is free software released under a three-way EPL/ GPL/ LGPL license. JRuby is tightly integrated with Java to allow the embeddi ...

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 stand ...

, which run the

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapp ...

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

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 SugarCRM is a software company based in Silicon Valley. It produces the on-premises and cloud-based web application Sugar, a customer relationship management (CRM) system. SugarCRM's functionality includes sales-force automation, marketing ca ...

phpBB phpBB is an Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language. The name "phpBB" is an abbreviation of ''PHP Bulletin Board''. Available under the GNU General Public License, phpBB is free and open-source. Features of phpBB includ ...

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP, hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported secure hypert ...

and

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia Website, websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sit ...

. 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.

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