Our objective is to provide a stable and secure environment for Arts, Sciences, & Engineering departments and student groups to create web based applications. The web design and development team will assist in configuration the server environment to correctly host these applications. All such applications will be hosted on the ASE web server. Please note that this environment is a production only environment, so development must take place on a department/organization machine (workstation or server).

Contact ITS if you would like to request an application space.

POLICY & GUIDELINES

Server Technologies

The ASE web hosting environment is configured to support server-side scripting using the Microsoft ASP and ASP.NET technologies. If you are using ASP, the scripts must be written in either VBScript or Jscript (JavaScript). Any language is supported if you are using ASP.NET (as the code hosted in the web environment is compiled to IL so an interpreter is not required). No other scripting technologies will be supported.

Several COM libraries are already installed in the hosting environment. These include ADO for database connectivity, CDONTS for SMTP mail services, and the Scripting Host libraries for file based IO. No custom COM libraries (either products of in-house development or 3rd parties) will be permitted in the hosting environment. Any .NET libraries created in your application are allowed, but they cannot be tasked as COM+ objects.

Databases

The use of databases in your application is supported in the web hosting environment (through ADO or ADO.NET based connectivity). If you are using ASP, it is recommended that you make use of a Microsoft Access based database. If you are working in ASP.NET, you can still use Microsoft Access, but a simpler and more efficient choice would be to use an XML driven DataSet. If you are going to be making use of a database in your application, please be sure to specify this in your request so the proper permission settings can be made to insure your database file and be updated by your application.

Access to a dedicated database server environment (i.e. Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, etc.) is not available at this time.

SMTP Services

The use of script generated SMTP email messages in your application is supported in the web hosting environment (through CDONTS or the System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail class). If you plan to make use of SMTP email, please be sure to specify this in your request so the proper application setting can be configured in your application shell.

Responsible Coding Guidelines

All application hosted in the web environment should be programmed to be efficient and flexible. Pathing assumptions should be avoided; instead, make sure to write supporting routines to correctly identify the root of your application as, during migrations, the physical path of your application may change. Exclusive locks on resources (files, for the most part) should be managed with care to avoid deadlocks. Additionally, applications should not buffer large amounts of data into memory for the lifetime of the application.

Aside from making your applications efficient and flexible, you must insure that your application does not abuse University resources. Applications that conduct mass (and especially, unsolicited) emailings are prohibited. Applications that gather sensitive or financial information are also prohibited as we do not have sufficient resources to insure the security of such data (nor would we take responsibility for the storage of such data).

Support

ITS is responsible for the configuration of the web space and troubleshooting of server related issues. ITS cannot provided development (debugging) support for any department/organization application. ITS does not support users to design and implement password protected sites using authentication on the ase.tufts.edu server. If you do not have the expertise to do such development on your own, please review the ITS web application design services for an alternate solution.

Restrictions

ITS reserves the right to remove any application that causes performance or security issues for the web hosting environment. Notification will be provided to the application developer after such an application has been removed.

Getting Started

If you are interested in requesting an application space, please email hosting@ase.tufts.edu.