Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Getting Started:
Application and Integration Services

WebSpeed Transaction Server

At the core of WebSpeed is the Transaction server. This is the component that responds to a client request by running a WebSpeed application (also known as a Web object) and by formatting the HTML that is sent back to the requesting client.

The WebSpeed Transaction server is comprised of two components, a broker and an agent.

WebSpeed broker

The broker is a process that does the following:

Registers the WebSpeed services that it provides to a NameServer for access by one or more HTML clients. The HTML client runs from within an Internet browser. (Note that the broker can also run without the NameServer. It can connect directly to the WebSpeed Messenger.)
Manages connections between clients and a pool of WebSpeed agents.
Maintains the status of each agent in its pool and dynamically scales the number of agents according to changing demand.

WebSpeed Agent

The agent is a process that executes Web objects and performs database transactions. It dynamically creates the HTML that is sent to the client.

WebSpeed agents commonly run in stateless mode and are freed after they complete a client request. However, it is also possible to lock an agent to a client in order to maintain context between requests. In addition, you can preserve context using cookies, URL query strings, hidden HTML form fields, and connection identifiers.