Apple Computer, Inc.'s
application server framework for developing dynamic web applications.
WebObjects applications accept
HTTP requests either directly
(usually on a specific
port) or via an adaptor that sits
between them and the web server. Adaptors are either
CGI
programs or web server plug-ins (
NSAPI or
ISAPI).
The server processes special tags in
HTML pages to produce
dynamic but standard HTML. Tools are provided to easily set
and get object properties and invoke methods from these tags.
Applications can maintain
state over multiple
HTTP
request-response transactions (which are intrinsically
stateless). Applications can also use Apple's Enterprise Object Framework object relational mapping libraries for
object persistence and database access.
WebObjects was originally based on
Objective C and a simple
scripting language but now is more likely to be used with
Java. Versions are available for OS X,
Windows and
Unix.
Apple acquired WebObjects from
NeXT, along with
Steve Jobs.
WebObjects Home.