FORM-2
THE PATENTS ACT, 1970
(39 of 1970)
& THE PATENTS RULES, 2003
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION
(See section 10; rule 13)


LOW COST SCALABLE ENTERPRISE APPLICATION SYSTEM

TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED,
an Indian Company
of Nirmal Building, 9th floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021, Maharashtra, India.
THE FOLLOWING SPECIFICATION DESCRIBES THE INVENTION


FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to the field of enterprise applications. Particularly, the present invention relates to a cost effective scalable system for the enterprise application deployment.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Enterprise applications have made an enormous impact on businesses across the world in the past fifteen to twenty years. They have grown from being mere web portals to provide complex services and to integrate a host of other business applications (ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning, CRM -Customer Relationship Management, BI - Business Intelligence) with data repositories and warehouses through Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) services. In course of time, enterprise applications have become more complex and so are the deployment platforms those host them. The deployment platforms are required to render performance, scalability and robustness with an emphasis on security.
Most enterprise applications are multi-tiered. The most common tiers inside an enterprise application are the front end (for instance, a web portal), middlewares, the back end business logic and the back end.
The face (front end) of an enterprise application is typically a web portal that acts as an interface for a user. Web portals are built using static web technologies such as Hyper Text Mark up Language (HTML), Cascaded Style Sheets (CSS) or dynamic server and client side scripting technologies including Perl, Hyper text Preprocessor (PHP), Java Server Pages (JSP), Active Server Pages (ASP), Java Server Faces (JSF), JavaScript, Asynchronous JavaScript And XML (AJAX) and the like.
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Behind the web portal are middleware technologies those serve as a bridge between the back end and the front end. Middleware technologies need to manage user sessions and control the flow of data from the backend to the front end.
The back end business logic written using conventional programming languages are responsible for reading and writing data from a data repository, performing tasks of business logic and communicating with other back end applications which do the same.
The task of the back end involves managing database connections, optimizing performance of the application and the like.
The enterprise applications are hosted inside an application server which handles security and resource optimization. Database servers and file servers act as the custodians for databases and files respectively. So any physical infrastructure that houses an enterprise application must involve three physical components: (1) an application server; (2) a database server; and (3) a file server.
Security and scalability are critical issues in an enterprise application. Security involves protecting the application server from direct connections from the outside world. This can be done by placing a server in front of an application server. Such a server is called a "reverse proxy". All external connections addressed to the application server are routed through the reverse proxy, which may either pre-process the request by itself or forward it to the application server. Thus the "reverse proxy" acts as a guard to the
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incoming requests. Other security components include firewalls. For security, it is preferred to place firewalls both before the reverse proxy and before the application server.
Scalability is another issue. When the enterprise application handles a large number of connections at the same time, it becomes difficult to address so many requests. In such a case, the application server, if unable to handle so many requests, might face a resource crunch and crash. In order to prevent this, multiple application servers can be made to run the enterprise application. In that scenario, server load balancing becomes an issue.
With so many hardware and software components involved, the cost of deployment and running the enterprise application also shoots up to very high ranges. Therefore there is a need for an enterprise application system which:
• can be run and be deployed at a very low cost;
• is highly scalable;
• is highly secure;
• has reduced complexity of deployment;
• does not require advanced hardware and networking equipment; and
• does not require expensive and complex software.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide an enterprise application system which can be run and be deployed at a very low cost.
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It is another object of the present invention to provide an enterprise application system which is highly scalable.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an enterprise application system which is highly secure.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an enterprise application system which has reduced complexity of deployment.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide an enterprise application system which does not require advanced hardware and networking equipment.
One more object of the present invention is to provide an enterprise application system which does not require expensive and complex software.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS
The invention will now be described in relation to the accompanying
drawings, in which:
Figure 1 illustrates the block diagram of the infrastructure of the enterprise
application system in accordance with the present invention;
Figure 2 illustrates how the storage capability is expanded in accordance
with the present invention; and
Figure 3 illustrates how the application server load balancing is done in
accordance with the preferred embodiment of the present invention.
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS
The drawings and the description thereto are merely illustrative of an enterprise application system and only exemplify the invention and in no way limit the scope thereof.
The enterprise application system in accordance with the present invention can be run and be deployed at a very low cost, is highly scalable, is highly secure and has reduced complexity of deployment. This system does not require any advanced hardware and networking equipment and expensive complex software.
Figure 1 illustrates the block diagram of the infrastructure of the enterprise application system in accordance with the present invention represented by a reference numeral 100. The infrastructure involves clubbing the application server 110, the file server 112 and the database server 114 together into one machine called the main applications server 108. Although the abovementioned three servers can be hosted on different hardware, it is more compact to have them on a single machine. Nagios software can be used for monitoring the main applications server 108 and this software notifies the administrator of any server runtime issues by means of an SMS (Short messaging Service). Nagios is a popular open source computer system and network monitoring software application. It watches the hosts and services and alerts users when things go wrong and again, when the issues are solved.
Cisco PIX (Private Internet eXchange) firewalls, 102 and 106 protect the reverse proxy server 104 and the main applications server 108. Cisco PIX is a popular IP (Internet Protocol) firewall and network address translation
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(NAT) appliance. Reverse proxies hosted in reverse proxy server 104 and firewalls 102 and 106 are key physical/logical components of the system, acting as lines of defense against malicious attacks including hackings and denial of service. Additionally, the software system stack comprising the operating system (OS) and the reverse proxy is burned onto a read only media like a Digital Versatile Disk Read Only Memory (DVD ROM). The actual software is run via the DVD ROM. There is no hard disk involved in the reverse proxy system. This method, of using the reverse proxies burned from a read only media like DVD, increases the security of the system by not allowing intruders to install any trapdoors or malware.
The size of the reverse proxy server 104 can be increased typically by using a 4 GB (Giga Byte) RAM (Random Access Memory). The memory size can be increased to 16 GB or more depending on the requirement of the application. All machines are connected typically by a IGBPS (One Giga Byte Per Second - or even a higher speed) LAN (Local Area Network) and the main application server 108 can be part of a Virtual Private Network.
Figure 2 illustrates how the storage capability is expanded in accordance with the present invention. In order to ensure the storage capability, the main application server 108 machine should have a PCI2USB (PCI to USB) card with a plurality of USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports (typically 4). PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is an industry-standard bus for attaching peripherals to computers. A USB hub will be connected to each USB port of the PCI2USB card. The storage capacity can be increased by adding new USB hard disks (USB HDD). These hard disks can be of either SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) class, desktop class,
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laptop class or compatible to any similar processing device. These hard disks have external casing. The SATA computer bus is a storage interface for connecting host bus adapters (most commonly integrated into laptop computers and desktop motherboards) to mass storage devices (such as hard disk drives and optical drives). These hard disks are typically powered externally. The main application server 108 machine can have provisions for eSATA (external SATA) ports. eSATA provides a variant of SATA meant for external connectivity. By using the USB based hard disks, a scalable low cost data storage server can be built.
Figure 3 illustrates how the application server load balancing is typically done in accordance with the preferred embodiment of the present invention represented by & reference numeral 300. The performance of the main application server 108 can be increased by using multiple application servers represented by reference numerals 318, 320 and 322, with each of them running the application. These application servers 318, 320 and 322 can be run on multiple server class machines, desktop class machines, laptop class machines or any similar processing device. The application load can be managed using a software load balancer 316. A new application server can be added to the system as and when the requirement arises.
The software load balancer 316 can act as a front end controller, distributing the requests, depending on the load across each of the application servers 318, 320 and 322 running the enterprise application. Thus the software load balancer 316 is employed to solve the scalability issues.
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TECHNICAL ADVANCEMENTS & ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE
The technical advancements of the enterprise application system in accordance with the present invention include realization of an enterprise application system which:
• can be run and be deployed at a very low cost;
• is highly scalable;
• is highly secure;
• has reduced complexity of deployment;
• does not require advanced hardware and networking equipment; and
• does not require expensive complex software.
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While considerable emphasis has been placed herein on the particular features of this invention, it will be appreciated that various modifications can be made, and that many changes can be made in the preferred embodiments without departing from the principles of the invention. These and other modifications in the nature of the invention or the preferred embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the disclosure herein, whereby it is to be distinctly understood that the foregoing descriptive matter is to be interpreted merely as illustrative of the invention and not as a limitation.