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Application Servers
Choosing the platform vendor that’s right for your business
By Anne Thomas Manes
Research Director, Application Platform Strategies, Burton Group
Selection of an application server for your next project should be based on which platform will maximize your return on investment as well as your return on objectives. Most businesses operate in a heterogeneous environment where legacy systems interface with new deployments on disparate platforms. If migration to a Web services framework is your ultimate goal, then choosing a server that supports Web services standards will maximize the interoperability between platforms.
The commoditization of the application server market has created a class of products with few differentiating features. Your choice will probably be made based on other factors. For example, you may choose a product from the vendor with whom you have the best long-standing relationship. IBM WebSphere commands the lion’s share of the application server market because of its built-in customer base. If low cost is a primary factor, then you may choose an open-source product such as JBoss AS, available for free download. But if integration with legacy Microsoft systems is your overriding concern, then you may choose Microsoft’s .NET platform and server.
When you evaluate which platform technology to use, consider the unique requirements of the application being deployed and where you are willing to make trade-offs. The leading platforms such as Java and .NET provide similar services, but the communication protocols, interfaces, and container interaction models are fundamentally different. Therefore, your choice of framework is a fork in the road. Once that choice is made, subsequent choices about vendors and platforms are simplified.
J2EE vs. .NET
The Java and .NET platforms have much in common. Both support an object-oriented programming language, rich class libraries, component models and frameworks, distributed computing features, Web services, and a managed execution environment. However, they have different application features for development, execution, and interoperability.
Java is popular, in part, thanks to a rich set of standard interfaces, which are bundled as libraries of application programming interfaces (APIs). The Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specifications promote code reusability and enables portability across a wide range of application servers and deployment options. It is supported by multiple vendors and executes across a range of hardware profiles. J2EE supports high performance, scalability, reliability, availability, transaction integrity, security, and integration. The J2EE application container provides a highly scalable runtime environment for server-based applications.
.NET is Microsoft’s strategic application framework that enables development and deployment of Windows-based applications and XML-based Web services. The .NET Common Language Runtime is a managed code execution environment that can manage applications written in 25 different programming languages. Application services are roughly equivalent to those supported by J2EE, but they are more tightly integrated with the Microsoft operating system (OS), applications, clients, and development tools.
Excerpt from "Application Servers," InformationWeek Germany, April 2004. Copyright 2004 InformationWeek. |
