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Many application servers are evolving into e-business 'solution platforms' with integrated development tools and e-commerce services. We examined 11 such servers to see how they are meeting market demands.
As companies move beyond running simple catalog-and-- transaction e-commerce sites to building out more sophisticated e-business applications for both internal and external users, application servers have become much more commonplace. By providing run-time architectures that give Webbased applications the scalability, performance and reliability they need while tying together disparate back-end data sources and applications, application servers are perfect for such environments.
The products in this field are maturing, particularly in their support of J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and in offering a "solution" platform that extends beyond traditional application-server services to include e-commerce and portal services. We reviewed application servers from Art Technology Group (ATG), Borland Software Corp., Brokat Infosystems, IBM Corp., iPlanet, Lutris Technologies, Macromedia, Persistence Software, SilverStream Software and Sybase. We also looked at a beta version of Microsoft .Net Enterprise (see ".Net Enterprise Is Powerful, Proprietary," page 68).
Our tests resulted in two Editor's Choice winners: IBM's WebSphere Application Server Advanced Edition 3.5 and Macromedia's ColdFusion 4.5.1 Enterprise. For large enterprises, IBM's product provides an open, Java-based platform that lets organizations build or, preferably, buy whatever is needed to solve typical business problems. In addition, the WebSphere Application Server is part of IBM's larger suite of complementary products that sits on top of this world-class solution.
For small to midsize installations-for which J2EE compliance is not an overriding priority-Macromedia's ColdFusion remains the undisputed leader. ColdFusion forgoes the lure of J2EE and sticks to the basics. Its proprietary but extensible tag-based CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language) makes any developer familiar with HTML immediately productive. If you want to build reasonably sophisticated applications and get them up and running quickly, ColdFusion is a great choice. Macromedia also offers a Java-based application server, JRun, to cater to the J2EE crowd. But in terms of development simplicity and developer support, its ColdFusion is an extremely strong offering.
J2EE COMPLIANCE
The J2EE standard is gaining acceptance as a specification for the services and baseline capabilities that application servers should provide under a standard Java-based architecture. J2EE-compliant application servers let their customers run any application built to the standard....