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From: Murray Eisenberg on 8 Apr 2010 08:00
webMathematica is something VERY easy to run on a server -- provided that:

(1) you have sufficient access and permissions for that server,
including putting scripts in certain locations there;

(2) that server has:

(a) the free Java run-time environment;
(b) the free Apache Tomcat (or another "Java Servlet container";
(c) Mathematica (actually, only a Mathematica kernel);

(3) a licensed webMathematica (of course!);

(4) you install on the server the webMathematica files in the
appropriate locations (e.g., with Tomcat, in its webapps
subdirectory); and

(5) you edit one of the files from (4) so as to reflect the situation
of the relevant files on that server, including the location of
Mathematica.

The webMathematica files themselves consist of various .m packages, .jar
Java executables, an Apache loadable module (Linux) or .dll (Windows)
along with .html files for examples and documentation, etc.

The communication between the web page served up to your browser (or, if
on a public server, to the user's browser) by Tomcat, on the one hand,
and the Mathematic kernel, which does the actual dirty work, is by means
of JLink.

I can do this even on my own local Windows XP PC -- for my own
development purposes (since my machine is not open to the world as a
server).

As its shipped, webMathematica comes with a copy of Mathematica; for use
on your own machine for local, experimental purposes only, your existing
Mathematica installation suffices.

For use on a public server, the issue would be what kind of license you
buy. And part of the price is determined by how many instances of the
kernel you're allowed to run concurrently to handle the user load. (The
webMathematica interface makes a call to start a kernel, do the
calculation, and then releases the kernel. So this is fairly efficient.)

Obviously, WRI will be happy to quote a price for different levels of
webMathematica.

Some site licenses, e.g., at educational institutions, include an
"amateur edition" that puts various restrictions on use.

I hope this helps to shed a little light, even if I cannot quote any
dollar figures.

On 4/7/2010 3:21 AM, David Park wrote:
> Very interesting question.
>
> I have never been able to understand the promotional material for
> webMathematica. Can one run webMathematica from a standard user web site
> provided by an ISP? Or does one have to have one's own server setup, and
> what would that consist of? Where would the Mathematica engine that drives
> webMathematica actually reside? (It would be nice to have an answer that I
> could operationally understand and not in some jargon.) Is webMathematica
> something accessible for ordinary Mathematica users and developers, or is it
> ultimately a high priced institutional type application? Is it available to
> Premier subscribers?
>
> If I recollect correctly, there is a possibility that in the near future WRI
> will provide a way so that anyone can read a Mathematica notebook on line in
> a web browser. Would this include the use of active controls and be able to
> utilize private packages? Would this be an alternative to webMathematica?
>
> Lots of questions, but being able to communicate efficiently with people who
> don't presently have Mathematica is still the missing link.
>
>
> David Park
> djmpark(a)comcast.net
> http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/
>
>
>
> From: Nicholas Chung [mailto:nchung66(a)u.washington.edu]
>
> I have Mathematica 7 but I was wondering how it compares to
> WebMathematica and WorkBench? Can I create full applications and
> interactive websites with Mathematica? How much control do I have over
> the user interface design?
>
>
>

--
Murray Eisenberg murray(a)math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H)
University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W)
710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801
Amherst, MA 01003-9305

From: telefunkenvf14 on 8 Apr 2010 08:01
On Apr 7, 2:21 am, "David Park" <djmp...(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> Very interesting question.
>
> I have never been able to understand the promotional material for
> webMathematica. Can one run webMathematica from a standard user web site
> provided by an ISP? Or does one have to have one's own server setup, and
> what would that consist of? Where would the Mathematica engine that drives
> webMathematica actually reside? (It would be nice to have an answer that I
> could operationally understand and not in some jargon.) Is webMathematica
> something accessible for ordinary Mathematica users and developers, or is it
> ultimately a high priced institutional type application? Is it available to
> Premier subscribers?
>
> If I recollect correctly, there is a possibility that in the near future WRI
> will provide a way so that anyone can read a Mathematica notebook on line in
> a web browser. Would this include the use of active controls and be able to
> utilize private packages? Would this be an alternative to webMathematica?
>
> Lots of questions, but being able to communicate efficiently with people who
> don't presently have Mathematica is still the missing link.
>
> David Park
> djmp...(a)comcast.nethttp://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/
>
> From: Nicholas Chung [mailto:nchun...(a)u.washington.edu]
>
> I have Mathematica 7 but I was wondering how it compares to
> WebMathematica and WorkBench? Can I create full applications and
> interactive websites with Mathematica? How much control do I have over
> the user interface design?

I've actually been reading up on how to install WebMMA and showed the
setup instructions to the IT guys at my university. Their reaction
wasn't all that comforting. (Most of them don't deal with anything
Java)

Anyways, I was going to call in and suggest a couple of possible
improvements:

1. WRI could provide a VMWare server appliance to significantly ease
the setup. Two reasons WRI might NOT want to do this. Copy protection
may not work as it should---I don't know, just a hunch---and the cost
involved with configuring, releasing, and maintaining virtual
appliances may not actually be worth it. Definitely adding cost, not
necessarily adding revenue.

2. WRI might instead consider a WebMathematica hosted solution. This
would be tricky too, as such a service could directly compete with
Mathematica itself---in other words: How in the would you price it
(without alienating users with aggressive price discrimination)? Most
of the people that would choose a hosted solution are probably like
me. That is, dabblers in something new, only trying out the WebMMA due
to the availability via Premier Service. Another potential problem
with the hosted idea would be cost of computing time (i.e., my bad
code burns up server time).

3. A hybrid of (1) and (2): WRI could configure a VM appliance,
bundled with WebMMA, that could be immediately uploaded and deployed
to a cloud hosting service such as Amazon. (Q: Has anyone used
Amazon's cloud computing services? I looked at the rates recently and
didn't think they looked too bad... just wondering about real world
experiences for pay-go computing.)

From: Scot T. Martin on 8 Apr 2010 08:03
As a further hint from webMathematica user, we have used it both on
Unix/Apache platform and on Windows platform. The installation is easier
and the system more stable with the Windows platform, at least for us.
Nevertheless, we still use the Unix/Apache platform for no excellent
reason.

As a product, I find that webMathematica is superb: the full access to the
Mathematica command set really gives an excellent amount of control and
possibilities (at very little programming effort) to all kinds of high-end
web-based applications (i.e., database, technical, graphical, etc).

On Wed, 7 Apr 2010, Arturas Acus wrote:

>
> Dear David,
>
> we use webMma several years. Short explanations running linux OS from my
> expierence below.
>
> On Wed, 7 Apr 2010, David Park wrote:
>
>> Very interesting question.
>>
>> I have never been able to understand the promotional material for
>> webMathematica. Can one run webMathematica from a standard user web site
>> provided by an ISP?
>
> To run webMma you have to sign special agreement with Wolfram and
> register server in their data base.
>
>
> Or does one have to have one's own server setup, and
>> what would that consist of?
> We use our own web server running separate linux machine. In addition to
> web server (apache in our case) webMma requires tomcat server. And if You
> want not just Mathematica kernel functionality, but also to display Mathematica
> generated graphics, then xvnc server is also needed (we use tightvnc).
>
>
> Where would the Mathematica engine that drives
>> webMathematica actually reside? (It would be nice to have an answer that I
>> could operationally understand and not in some jargon.)
> Mathematica is installed in usual unix way for some user. You can
> imagine webMma as an java script collection, which accepts web inquiries,
> then cals Mathematica kernel (which in turn cals Mathematica front end to generate
> graphics) and then puts Mathematica generated rezults back. As I mentioned tomcat
> server plays central part here. webMathematica scripts provides call
> security check as well as limits for allowed kernel computation time,
> memory
> size, kernel number, restart times, etc...
>
>
>
> Is webMathematica
>> something accessible for ordinary Mathematica users and developers, or is it
>> ultimately a high priced institutional type application?
>
> High priced application
>
> Is it available to
>> Premier subscribers?
>>
>> If I recollect correctly, there is a possibility that in the near future WRI
>> will provide a way so that anyone can read a Mathematica notebook on line in
>> a web browser. Would this include the use of active controls and be able to
>> utilize private packages? Would this be an alternative to webMathematica?
>>
>> Lots of questions, but being able to communicate efficiently with people who
>> don't presently have Mathematica is still the missing link.
>>
>>
>> David Park
>> djmpark(a)comcast.net
>> http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Nicholas Chung [mailto:nchung66(a)u.washington.edu]
>>
>> I have Mathematica 7 but I was wondering how it compares to
>> WebMathematica and WorkBench? Can I create full applications and
>> interactive websites with Mathematica? How much control do I have over
>> the user interface design?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

From: János Löbb on 8 Apr 2010 08:04

On Apr 7, 2010, at 7:25 AM, David Bailey wrote:

> David Park wrote:
>> Very interesting question.
>>
>> I have never been able to understand the promotional material for
>> webMathematica. Can one run webMathematica from a standard user web
>> site
>> provided by an ISP? Or does one have to have one's own server
>> setup, and
>> what would that consist of? Where would the Mathematica engine that
>> drives
>> webMathematica actually reside? (It would be nice to have an answer
>> that I
>> could operationally understand and not in some jargon.) Is
>> webMathematica
>> something accessible for ordinary Mathematica users and developers,
>> or is it
>> ultimately a high priced institutional type application? Is it
>> available to
>> Premier subscribers?
>>
>
> My thoughts exactly! I do wish that when WRI add a piece of extra
> software meant to augment basic Mathematica in some way, they asked
> themselves some basic questions:
>
> 1) What new capabilities will this add to Mathematica?
>
> 2) Is the software an add-on, or a different version of Mathematica?
>
> 3) If it could potentially expose a lot of Mathematica
> functionality to
> people who have not purchased Mathematica, how will this be prevented.
>
> 4) Does it solve a problem that is not already solvable in a
> satisfactory way?
>
> Ideally they would ask themselves these questions before embarking on
> the project, and they would then supply answers these questions in
> promotional material describing the product!
>
> For example, with GUIKit, I never knew whether this software was
> designed to hide the underlying Java, or repackage it in some way. I
> knew you could (optionally) use it to create widgets in XML format,
> but
> I never knew why this would be useful (given that the XML code would
> only work in conjunction with Mathematica!), etc.
>
> I also wish that WRI would keep new jargon to an absolute minimum.
> Explanations in terms of jargon that is not itself defined is not
> worth
> very much!
>
> David Bailey
> http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk

My newbie understanding is that with WebMathematica, you can generate
a webapplication that runs on Tomcat or any other servlet container
and uses Mathematica as the computational engine.

J=E1nos

From: Ingolf Dahl on 10 Apr 2010 06:52
Just for people interested in using webMathematica:
You might find some nice examples if you check here

http://www.mma-users.org/webMathematica/wiki/wiki.jsp?pageName=Links#Powered
_by_webMathematica
(please add more examples if you know!)

or of course here

http://www.wolfram.com/products/webmathematica/index.html

Best regards

Ingolf Dahl
Sweden



> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Park [mailto:djmpark(a)comcast.net]
> Sent: den 7 april 2010 09:21
> To: mathgroup(a)smc.vnet.net
> Subject: Re: Mathematica Programming
>
> Very interesting question.
>
> I have never been able to understand the promotional material for
> webMathematica. Can one run webMathematica from a standard user web
> site
> provided by an ISP? Or does one have to have one's own server setup,
> and
> what would that consist of? Where would the Mathematica engine that
> drives
> webMathematica actually reside? (It would be nice to have an answer
> that I
> could operationally understand and not in some jargon.) Is
> webMathematica
> something accessible for ordinary Mathematica users and developers, or
> is it
> ultimately a high priced institutional type application? Is it
> available to
> Premier subscribers?
>
> If I recollect correctly, there is a possibility that in the near
> future WRI
> will provide a way so that anyone can read a Mathematica notebook on
> line in
> a web browser. Would this include the use of active controls and be
> able to
> utilize private packages? Would this be an alternative to
> webMathematica?
>
> Lots of questions, but being able to communicate efficiently with
> people who
> don't presently have Mathematica is still the missing link.
>
>
> David Park
> djmpark(a)comcast.net
> http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/
>
>
>
> From: Nicholas Chung [mailto:nchung66(a)u.washington.edu]
>
> I have Mathematica 7 but I was wondering how it compares to
> WebMathematica and WorkBench? Can I create full applications and
> interactive websites with Mathematica? How much control do I have over
> the user interface design?
>



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