eWeek has published reviews of Websphere 5 and Sun One 7. The Websphere review compares it to other J2EE 1.3 servers and discusses its caching and management features. The Sun One discusses the complete re-write of the server and its current feature set.

Read Sun Application Server Reborn and IBM Caches Up.

"Webshere is now compatible with the latest J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) 1.3 standard" - big deal!! After months of other app servers getting 1.3 compliant(even small time players like players like Paramati), Big Blue finally followed suit. I doubt if Websphere would have grabbed that much of the marketshare if it had not been for the IBM muscle backing it up. Apart from always lagging behind in Java technologies, it's been a nightmare to setup compared to Weblogic. The Websphere redbook has 80 pages as installation guide for Websphere 4.0 - first setup a HTTP server, then install a database(why on earth should I ever need a database to install an app server) and then install the app server. If you go by the redbook, that's at least 1.5-2 hrs for the installation!!!
      Although, they have always been comparable as far as scalability and performance is concerned, it's good news for Websphere users that they have improved significantly as far as initial setup and maintainability is concerned. Hopefully Websphere has finally come of age with 5.0.

If you install Websphere 4 Advanced Single server, you don't need to install a database. The webserver also can be skipped. I wonder how BEA would allow persistent sessions and clustering without a database :-)
Just wondering...

Besides that, installing Websphere 4 on Windows, I personally don't need a manual to click x times 'Next'.

Persistence can be done in other ways, not necesarily in a database. Like for example... in plain old files, as the database itself does only in much more complicated ways??

"If you install Websphere 4 Advanced Single server, you don't need to install a database. The webserver also can be skipped. "

Websphere 5.0 does not require a database for ANY version. Failover of HTTP Session data can be configured via use of a database (like previous versions of Websphere) or through replication with other servers by Websphere internal messaging.

Tom: "Websphere 5.0 does not require a database for ANY version. Failover of HTTP Session data can be configured via use of a database (like previous versions of Websphere) or through replication with other servers by Websphere internal messaging."

Or, for performance, using Coherence ;-)

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

Cameron,
Does Coherence support Websphere 5.0? I only see Websphere 4.0 on your Web Site.
How does it plug into Websphere?

Tom

WebSphere 5 supports Servlet 2.3. ;-)

Big Blue has always made its money being second, not first

<rajiv>After months of other app servers getting 1.3 compliant(even small time players like players like Paramati), Big Blue finally followed suit.</rajiv>

Well, that isn't really the picture.

Though this particular eWeek article didn't mention it (although others in the past have), IBM was one of the first companies to ship a J2EE 1.3 certified appserver, back in December 2002 (within a day or so of Pramati). Months ahead of BEA, more months ahead of Oracle. I'd assert this likely sped up some other companies' plans for getting J2EE 1.3 certified. :)

WebSphere 5.0 is the polished, production-hardened follow-on to that original WS 5.0 TD "developer's" release. You can argue that "yeah but the TD release wasn't recommended for production" which is true. BEA and others gave similar recommendations for their first J2EE 1.3 releases when they came out.

Every software company makes tradeoffs for shipping something on the bleeding edge vs. polishing it more so it's production-ready. Also whether to ship something sooner with less function vs. later with more function. Different customers (and sometimes different areas within the same customer shop) want different options on that tradeoff depending on their own situation, and IBM, along with other vendors, provides offerings for those multiple situations. When looking at the big picture, IBM is now right up there with the best, though I'd agree that wasn't always the case a few years ago. We're right in the thick of things with the J2EE 1.4 spec finalization process, and actually WebSphere 5.0 already provides a sizable amount of the technologies slated for J2EE 1.4; the JMX and Web Services features are good examples, with more on the way in the future.

Randy Schnier
WebSphere Development

I should have said 2001 not 2002 above. Sorry :)

Randy

"IBM is now right up there with the best, though I'd agree that wasn't always the case a few years ago" - It's not "a few years ago" - it was the same story till last year(and even today).. the unfortunate part is that Websphere still grabbed the same marketshare as Weblogic even though the latter was much more "polished" and "production-hardened".

Rajiv,
don't you think customers/users are smart enough to determine if an application is good? Thankfully they don't depend on your bitter, skewed opinion to make their decisions. We argue about trivial ultra technical details, forgetting what really matters -- WHAT DOES THE CUSTOMER THINK!!!!

"Organizations pushing the Java envelope, however, will find WebLogic their best bet." Enough said.

I don't know, I hear a lot of IBM bashing on this forum which seems strange to me.

Who contributes more than 80% of the JAVA API's to the Java Spec?

Who has a fully integrated development and test environment based on open source eclipse?

Who has a must faster JVM than sun?

Who's WebSphere is Robust, Scales well, and is supported on virtually EVERY platform and OS?

If you answered IBM to all of you above, you'd be right. Seems like IBM is a pretty tough act to follow.

Fastest JVM...BEA JRockit just posted a new world record for 4 way Intel boxes. See SPEC for details.

Eric

I think IBM is doing alot of good for Java. But a bad product is still a bad product, even if it's released by a company like which does alot of good stuff. Websphere 4 sucked alot.