How do you go about choosing a Java application server? We are currently in the process of doing this and after much deliberation we have come to the following conclusion. There are only really a handful to choose from: IBM Websphere, Sun GlassFish, JBoss, BEA Weblogic and Oracle. Oracle has just bought BEA Weblogic so one of these will be phase out over time. So right I am not sure which one more clarity on this will probably be available from Oracle soon. So the first question is cost. JBoss and GlassFish are free and only require a support license so if you want to embed or setup the app server as part of your product then I would choose one of these. IBM Websphere has all the bells and whistles, but in my mind is far to bulky for most applications and besides the last time I looked it only supports the IBM Java VM. This Java VM is always at least few months behind the Sun VM in terms of supported Java versions.
The next question is whether your client requires a 'big name' behind the server. This eliminates JBoss as it is perceived to be open-source and therefore unreliable. Although in practice this is not the case.
So the bottom line is that with the uncertainty of the BEA-Oracle takeover, Websphere's bloat and JBoss being opensource, the only real option at the moment is Sun's GlassFish.
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2 comments:
Yes, sadly people still has the perception that an open source product is somehow inferior. Does it not help that Jboss is now in the Red Hat stable?
I have also previously used WebSphere (5.1 & 6.0), and it is definitely a very bloaty product consuming a huge amount of resources!
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