Network security imposes certain restrictions on what client applications
are allowed to do:
Applets can only communicate back to the host from which they
were downloaded.
Direct IP connections between a JDBC client and database are not
allowed when a firewall is between the client and the database server.
The HCL Informix® HTTP proxy handles both of
these problems. The proxy is a servlet that runs in the middle tier between a JDBC client and the
Informix® database server. The proxy extracts
SQL requests from the JDBC client and transmits them to the database server. The client (the end
user) is unaware of this middle tier.
The HTTP proxy feature is not part of the JDBC 2.0 specification.
The following figure illustrates how the proxy enables a connection
to a database that is behind a firewall. Figure 1. Connecting through a firewall
