Mini application server

Mini is a application server designed to be simple and have a small footprint. It has the features you need to be able to develop small webapplications that you want to deploy on a machine with modest hardware. Mini is implemented as a windows service and runs under windows 2000/XP/Vista. Mini is developed by Toni Thomsson and is still under heavy development, far from finnished, especially the documentation, wich for the moment is quite sparse. Still, it has been successfully used in a number of projects already. So if you are looking for something like Mini and you're not afraid of "The bleeding edge", try it out!




[samples] [download] [install]

Feature list
Mini-fast-CGI. Mini-standard for writing C/C++ webapplications that reside in DLL:s for fast execution. Easy to debug your C++ webapps.
Java support. Write Mini-fast-CGI web-applications in Java. (Requires a installed JVM of version 1.4 or later) . Easy to debug your Java webapps.
CGI/1.1 compatible. Write your own standard CGI-scripts in the language you prefer.
ODBC database-pool support with automatic transaction support. For easy and fast access to your database from your webapplication.
Message FIFO queue support. Send messages to a queue and receive messages from queues in a java- or C++ listeners.
SMS support, receive and send SMS messages in your Mini webapplications. (Requires a mobilephone connected to the server)
Multi-language support made easy.
Skin support. Skin your webaplications easy.
Basic user authentication and declarative authorization support. No coding required.
Multi threaded server for fast response to simultainous users. Mini is able of handeling up to 100 transactions/s if your webapplication is written i C++.
Small footprint and memory consumption, only 5MB disk and 8MB RAM needed (when not using Java)
Easy setup and configuration.


My other projects built on Mini:
myMusic
http-tunnel



Installation
To install Mini do the following (may require editing of some files, see below. A real installation program will be developed in the future to make Mini easier to install):

1. Unpack mini.zip in a folder (use C:\Program Files\tonjac.org\mini if you don't want to update the configurationfiles). If you want to install it in a different folder you must update mini.ini, log.ini and mini.reg. Replace all references to C:\Program Files\tonjac.org\mini to the path of your choosen installation folder. If your windows system catalogue is in a different folder than C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 update the reference to it in mini.reg.

2. Install a Java JRE 1.4+ (install it under C:\Program Files\Java if you don't want to update the configurationfiles). If you install Java in a different folder than C:\Program Files\Java update block [java], entry jvm_path , in mini.ini. If you don't want to use Java at all, change block [mini], entry java to 0 in mini.ini.

3. Run setup.bat

4. Click mini.url to surf into Mini's Manual page

Default installation of Mini sets up Mini to listen at port 800. If you don't want to use 800 as the listening port, update block [mini], entry listen_port in mini.ini and replace 800 with your choosen portnumber in setup.bat. If you already have installed Mini to listen to a port that you want to change, run mini.exe -m remove update mini.ini and run mini.exe -m install. Restart with net start "Mini application server (xxxx)", where xxxx is your portnumber.

Mini comes with an MS-Access database but you can use any database that has an ODBC driver. Just create a new ODBC datasource and update mini.ini if you name it something other than MINI.



SMS support
If you want to use Mini's SMS service you must install Java's comm API. You can download it from here.

1. Unpack javacomm20-win32.zip

2. Copy win32comm.dll to C:\Program Files\Java\jre\bin

3. Copy comm.jar to C:\Program Files\Java\jre\lib\ext

4. Copy javax.comm.properties to C:\Program Files\Java\jre\lib


Promote and support Mini
If you build something with Mini, please feel free to promote it, perhaps by using the following images.

...and a link to http://www.tonjac.org/mini/

...and if you're happy with Mini, and wan't it to be further developed, support it by donating a small fee.