Abstract:

Enterprise Web applications are built by integrating distributed components connected via a network. The runtime environment of these applications consists of an heterogeneous system of specialized components (Web Servers, Application Servers, Database Management Systems, etc ...).

Teaching in the area of enterprise Web applications development is therefore a challenge. Students should acquire skills in various topics that have traditionally been separate areas of knowledge: software engineering, database management systems, operating systems, computer networks and computer security. The result is that teaching of a practical laboratory component in this area requires a dedicated laboratory, isolated from the rest of the infrastructure of the center. Construction, management and maintenance of these environments is a complex task and requires a large amount of resources. In this context, virtualization is an economically viable alternative to a dedicated laboratory, allowing to build a virtual lab in which students can develop every facet of the development of Web applications.

In this work, we propose the creation of virtual laboratories suited for the development of enterprise Web aplications and based on NETinVM [1]. This tool allows you to create a computer network encapsulated in a portable environment (a VMWare virtual machine) on which all the services of an enterprise network are defined and executed.

The use of this kind of virtual laboratories provides various advantages:
- It is an integrated tool that can be shared by different subjects in different areas such as operating systems management, computer networks, computer and network security and Web development.
- It allows students to develop, deploy and test their applications in their own portable environment without compromising the real network.
- Students and teachers share a common environment, so classroom demonstrations can be reproduced by the students.
- It facilitates the tasks of coordination between teachers of different subjects in a course.

References:
[1] C. Pérez y D. Pérez, NETinVM: una red en una máquina virtual, Actas de las XIX Jornadas de Paralelismo. Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I. ISBN: 978-84-8021-676-0, September 2008.

Keywords:

Virtual environments, Web applications development.