9 ways to use network-side scripting to architect faster, scalable, more secure applications

You may recall a recent overview on network-side scripting that described a few uses of this technology integrated with application delivery controllers. With thousands of examples of the uses of network-side scripting it's hard to choose just one to adequately represent its potential. Luckily, we don't have to stick to just one. Viva la Internet!

Based on the technical session the great network-side scripting guru Colin and I ran at SD Best Practices in October, I've pulled nine ways to use network-side scripting that can enhance the scalability, security, and performance of web applications into a presentation for your viewing pleasure.

These uses of network-side scripting technology improve security, performance, and scalability primarily by offloading resource intensive and shared application logic onto the application delivery platform. In a few cases the application intelligence provided by such platforms is also used to aid in the architecture of a more scalable infrastructure (e.g., application switching). 

I'm including the list here, but if you want the goods (replete with explanations and sample code) then you'll want to walk through the shared presentation.

  1. Cookie encryption
    (security, performance, scalability)
  2. Session persistence
    (scalability)
  3. URI Rewrite
    (scalability, security)
  4. Application switching
    (scalability, security)
  5. Exception handling
    (security)
  6. Data scrubbing
    (security, scalability)
  7. Intelligent compression
    (performance, scalability)
  8. LDAP connection proxying
    (performance, scalability)
  9. Customized 404 responses 
    (scalability)
 
Published Dec 11, 2008
Version 1.0

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