This is the first non experimental release in quite a while, and we urge all users to upgrade to it. It includes a significant number of fixes and enhancements since the latest stable release, as well as specification compliance fixes for many of the J2EE 1.3 APIs.

This release is likely to be the last to add new features in the 2.x series as we shift our focus to Orion 3.0, which will support the J2EE 1.4 APIs.

For more information on Orion, visit us at http://www.orionserver.com

The Orion team

Oracle application Server is Orion, that is why it's fast.

Now I use Tomcat 5.5

.V

Orion Server is a pleasure to work with. Its fast deployments make iterative development easier. I can hardly wait until Orion Server 3.0, which will have JSP 2.0 support.

Speaking as someone who spent nearly a year of his life beating his head against Orion's lackluster standards compliance, and dearth of useful documentation, I honestly can't understand how anyone can stand using Orion.

I still remember spending a day scratching my head because Orion 1.6 didn't actually support the CONFIDENTIAL value for transport-guarantee in web.xml...a fact which was only discovered by reading a year old bug report. There were days where I would actually sit there and wonder if the developers had actually even READ the J2EE spec...

And don't even get me started on their half-assed attempt at a JMS implementation. Never could get that damned thing to work right. And Orion Clustering? Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

I've since changed companies and spent the last 6 months working with Weblogic. What a world of difference! Standards compliance. Easy server configuration and management. Documentation! It's not perfect, but it sure beats the pants off of Orion any day of the week.

Congrats, Magnus .. I've been wondering and waiting for this ;-)

Magnus! I must say that Orion rocks! I'm not exactly sure what release Orion will support JMX, but when it does, will it be documented? It's time that Orion has a web interface to it.

-Dr. Java

P.S. Keep up the good work.

Orion is still my favorite app server. I start Liferay Enterprise on it, with a ton of EJBs, and it's still faster than loading Liferay Pro (without ejbs) on tomcat.

I hope Orion keeps improving! I remember the time when it had partial EJB 2.0 compliance before anyone else. It'd be nice to see Orion at the forefront again.

I wonder if it's because the orion team is busy doing stuff for Oracle that they haven't had time for other stuff.

It's about time :P

The last stable release (2.0.2) was 19 June 03!

It wasn't until about a month ago that they even acknowledged J2EE 1.4 in the first announcement of Orion 3.

We were seriously starting to consider moving to another app server that *did* have support - although based on their track record for releasing updates, I won't hold my breath for it's release.

Yes, but I still have a lot of faith in the Orion guys. For 2 years, 2 guys developed a very very very good app server. Still the best imho.

They're in a league of their own. Oracle scrapped their own j2ee server to use orion's base. Who can put that on their resume?

My guess is that Oracle recognizes their skills and are paying them to build Oracle9iAS and they have to work on Orion in the background.

But Orion is still their puppy. I'm sure Oracle9iAS has tons of ugly code added to it now for ppl Magnus might have to supervise, whereas Orion, their puppy, is clean and built just the way they like it.

But this is all just guessing on my part :)

Great to see a GA release!

Many, if not most, organizations will not use a beta or early access release in production.

My guess is that Oracle recognizes their skills and are paying them to build Oracle9iAS and they have to work on Orion in the background.But Orion is still their puppy. I'm sure Oracle9iAS has tons of ugly code added to it now for ppl Magnus might have to supervise, whereas Orion, their puppy, is clean and built just the way they like it.But this is all just guessing on my part :)

Brian, if you go to TSSS in Vegas my advice to you would be to not gamble. :-)

The OC4J server has long since been taken over by a lot of smart and experienced folks, many of whom have more experience than Magnus and company. The excellent Bluestone team that were at HP for a while have been sharing stewardship of the OC4J server with some other folks that include the TopLink team (which has been doing work with EJB Containers since before the WebLogic server was owned by BEA). The OC4J server is a superior server because of the people that put a lot of hard work into it since Oracle took it over, not despite them. Of course don't take my word for it. Try it out and compare the features yourself.

BTW, guessing was never my strong point either so maybe we can sit together in Vegas and watch the experts :-)

-Mike

OC4J is rather flaky. How many times have you received the dreaded Repository out of Sync error? The OC4J web interface is beyond flaky and far from complete. Broken features, missing property input fields, and more have plagued OC4J from being a stable and viable solution in production. I really don't enjoy looking at the data-sources input screen and see it's lacking the pooled-location or other features and having to change the xml files by hand, only to have the OEM interface *blow* away any changes if you use the interface to make any future changes.

How can a company push out an incomplete product like that? WebCache is another good example of OC4J's highly experienced and smart people. Bugs, incomplete interfaces, and other issues make using it a nightmare. I've talked to Magnus and I know first hand how intelligent he is and I will not go to the extent that Mike has and say that Oracle has hired a better staff than Magnus.

Magnus and Ironflare, keep up the excellent work.

-Dr. Java

Hi Dr. Java, welcome to the TSS and congrats on your first post!

Of course, the fud, er, question you've raised has nothing whatsoever to do with OC4J, but rather it's undoubtedly a misconfiguration of oem, generally caused by making typos in oem configuration files, which are generally fixed with a resync command like "dcmctl resyncinstance". It appears you bit off way more than you could understand by looking at some other AS products, next time I recommend sticking with OC4J standalone since you like Java containers. ;)

  - Don

Unnamed Java person,

I never said anything about how intelligent Magnus is or isn't (nor could I do so as I have never even met the guy) or slighted him or any of the Ironflare team. In fact, I only even know one person apart from Magnus that works with Ironflare, and he seems like a good chap, so I would neither be qualified nor have any desire to pass any judgement good or bad.

What I did say, and will repeat again so as to be clear, is that many of the people that have taken over the J2EE Container here at Oracle are very bright folks and have a great deal of experience, some with even more experience than Magnus.

With regards to your comments about the OC4J server I cannot say exactly what your comments were based upon because I don't know what you did to get yourself into that situation. But I can say this. If you take the server that Oracle started with (from Orion) and compare it with where it is now (10.1.3 Dev preview) you will see a world of improvement and understand why it climbed from obscurity into the number 3 app server position. If you say that it was just marketing then you will have to explain why previous Oracle server offerings did not achieve the same levels of acceptance.

-Mike

PS Is that really your first post or are you astro-turfing?