IBM has released WebSphere V8, increasing the availability of application servers with support for JEE 6, which is very important.

In this release we find the following standards implemented:

• EJB 3.1
• Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java (CDI) 1.0
• Bean Validation 1.0
• JavaServer Faces (JSF) 2.0
• Java Servlet 3.0
• Java Persistence API (JPA) 2.0
• Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS) 1.1
• Java API for XML-based Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.2
• Enterprise Web Services 1.3 (JSR-109)
• Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.2
• and much more...
  
  A great article can be found here:
  http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/1106_alcott/1106_alcott.html
  
  
  The question is how long it takes to the new crop of application servers get to market, also allowing small businesses to develop their products with JEE 6.

This is actually quite remarkable timing for WebSphere. I am no fan of IBM, but I would love to see WebSphere finally get its act together.

I talked about the general CDI/Java EE implementation ecosystem during TSSJS 2011: http://www.caucho.com/articles/CDI_Landscape.pdf. This basically adds WebSphere to the available Java EE 6 options of GlassFish, JBoss and Resin. WebLogic, Geronimo and others should follow soon. To a degree, you have to give GlassFish kudos for changing the game in terms of time to market for Java EE implementations...

During my TSSJS analysis, Apache TomEE was not available yet. It is an excellent choice if Tomcat is your comfort zone. Here is the link for TomEE: http://openejb.apache.org/3.0/apache-tomee.html.

My favorite is of course Resin :-). It's a great choice for small business - it is lightweight, open source, feature-complete and cost-effective :-).

How long does it take to deploy an application in V8? and does it perform any better than V7? I have to use WAS6.1 and 7, but honestly it is painful. When other containers take 30 seconds to deploy an app, why should it take minutes on 6.1 and over 10 minutes on 7.

Setting up queue in 6.1 was ok, but with 7 it takes more steps. Will it require 50 steps to setup a queue in V8? I used to work for IBM, but I have no love for WAS.

I'm actually a long standing IBM fan myself, despite the great fun I get out of taking jabs at their software. I'll see if I can't do some investiagations and answer some of the questions you've been asking.

So in a way, for the full Java EE 6 specification, JBoss actually lost this round to IBM! Incredible! I guess no one would have believed this just a few years ago (in the JBoss AS 4.x days).

To be fair, JBoss AS 6 does actually implement the full Java EE 6 spec, but it's only certified for the web profile. From what I've heard, a lot of businesses seem to avoid JBoss AS 6, since no EAP version will be released for it and it was announced EOL only weeks after being released in favor of their next offering JBoss AS 7 (which was targeted to be released before the end of last Spring, but of course this didn't happen).

Check the release dates of WebSphere 7 and JBoss 5: It may have remained unnoticed at the time but JBoss lost the previous round to IBM as well! By a mere month but still - IBM's full Java EE 5 offering came before JBoss...

To put this is some perspective, WebSphere 7 was released more than two years after Java EE 5 was finalized. WebSphere 8, on the other hand was released with almost half that time lag with Java EE 6. Hopefully IBM will do even better next time. We certainly hope to for Java EE 7/Resin 5.

Also, JBoss AS 5 was a significant re-factoring effort and had one of the longest development cycles for JBoss AS. To be fair though, they did have almost 90+ of Java EE 5 functionality with JBoss 4.2. All discussed here: http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=52163.

Also, JBoss AS 5 was a significant re-factoring effort and had one of the longest development cycles for JBoss AS.

Which makes it a little strange to read on their forums that JBoss AS 7 has been developed completely from scratch. They spend years on refactoring only to just throw it all away relatively shortly after and start from absolutely zero again?

According to this same forum, JBoss AS 6 is actually JBoss AS 5 with just some updated components (JSF 2 etc) and there will be no EAP version based on it (JBoss EAP 6 will be based on JBoss AS 7, the logic behind that all is a little hard to follow really).

I do know what you mean. As far as I can understand, JBos AS 5 was just purely a code-cleanup effort to move to the Microkernel. I think the "start from zero" bit is a little bit of hyperbole. What they appear to be doing is cleaning up service loading/optimize performance. The decision not to have JBoss 6 EAP is indeed weird...

JBoss AS performance (memory, startup time) has also been less than stellar of late (although nowhere near the absolute resource hogs that WebSphere and WebLogic are). It does look like they are working on it for JBoss AS 7 though: http://community.jboss.org/wiki/JBossApplicationServer7-WhatsComing.

That being said, one of the primary goals for Resin in the next few weeks/months past the initial certification release is performance as well (before we start adding more Java EE 7-ish features like JCache, JMS 2, WebSocket, etc).

The question is how long it takes to the new crop of application servers get to market, also allowing small businesses to develop their products with JEE 6.

I'm both working for a big business at daytime, and my own small business after that. Been using Glassfish 3 and Java EE 6 since it was available (almost 1.5 years ago if I'm correct) :-)

With their last offering, JEE5 sertified WAS7, it's almost impossible to deploy a standard JEE5 application. Requires lots of WAS configuration and secret handshakes, supposedly from an army of WAS consultants I guess.

If deploying apps on WAS8 is as hairy as on WAS7, i'd call the JEE compliance moot. WAS7 was pure lock in tactics, not intended to run pure JEE5 apps at all.

Out of curiuosity, do you recall the actual issues you ran into? I have developed production Java EE 5/Seam 2 applications on WebSphere 7. It did require some additional WebSphere specific XML in cases where GlassFish and JBoss did not require it. Other than that, I don't recall any specific issues (other than WebSphere being very heavyweight of course).

I am planning to give WebSphere 8 a spin though. Last time, we did not run the EJB 3 in Action example code on WebSphere (we did run it on JBoss, Oracle AS, WebLogic and GlassFish without issues).

Have been using their WebSphere products for quite long time. Still can't get over the shock of WAS 3.5.

WAS 5.x was OK, and WSAD is nice. Then the nightmare again with RSA product. While other light weight solution are becoming leaner, this one requires Gs of space and many DVDs just to install it.

I am much happier using Tomcat, WebLogic and other open source products.