XPages architecture from a web perspective

Yesterday I mused about how you can add a Domino 8.5 xPages server to an existing Domain without changing the existing infrastructure. Looking at the picture I realized, that while its function seems to be obvious, it actually might only be obvious to the initiated. So I went back to the drawing board. In a typical web application setting using other technologies (like JSP, ASP or PHP) you typically have a web server, an application server and a database server (they can and do sit quite often on the same physical machine). This is well understood by almost all IT decision makers. So for a Notes application web enablement you need a web server. This would look like this:

You add a "Web Frontend Server" to your existing infrastructure. It is like adding an Apache to an Oracle database or MS-IIS to MS-SQL. The nice thing in the Domino stack however is, that you don't need to acquire new skills to administrate this "Web Frontend Server". The box is simply your's truly Domino 8.5