[TheServerSide Newsletter #28]
 This newsletter sponsored in part by ORACLE
Developing with Open Standards? Demanding High Performance? Join the Oracle9i JDeveloper movement and check out how built-in profilers and CodeCoach make your Java code tighter and faster than ever before. Based on the latest J2EE and XML standards. Download your FREE Developer Edition of the Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 today.

IN THIS ISSUE


New ECperf Results
 o BEA takes the performance lead with new ECPerf results

Featured Technical Articles
 o Portal Standards
 o Developing Interoperable Web Services: Integrating Java and Microsoft .NET

Hard Core Tech Talks
 o Glen Martin - Senior Product Manager J2EE
 o Craig McClanahan - Primary Developer, Struts Framework

Enterprise Java Education Strategies
 o How should your company embrace web services?

New Application Server Reviews
 o Review of iPortal Application Server
 o Review of JRun Application Server

Upcoming Conferences
 o BEA eWorld 2002
 o SD Software Development Conference & Expo

New J2EE Patterns
 o User Interface Validator Pattern

Key J2EE Industry News Headlines
 Some key headlines:
 o Apache Software Foundation on Warpath over Java Licencing
 o Sun shifts core Java unit from US to Bangalore, India

This newsletter is transmitted twice a month. It is printer-friendly and available online


NEW ECPERF RESULTS


BEA takes the performance lead with new ECPerf results

In an HP sponsored ECperf posting, BEA Weblogic Server 7.0 beta has leaped ahead of IBM Websphere in both performance and price/performance metrics. Also in recent news, Borland withdrew their original ECperf result last week.

After seeing these results I called up Weblogic to get the scoop. Eric Stahl, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Weblogic Server answered a few questions:

Floyd: HP sponsored these results. What is HP's involvement in this benchmark?

Eric: Our platform independent and agnostic attitude towards the underlying hardware/OS/DB means we are going to publish as many results on as many platforms as possible to reflect real world deploy environments common in our customer base.

Floyd: Is this a pattern you expect other vendors to follow?

Eric: One of our key value propositions is platform neutrality. Whereas IBM is trying to sell a single vendor solution, I don't think even they will only benchmark on IBM hardware and software.

Floyd: So how did you guys do so well over IBM?

Eric: It was purely a matter of getting our engineers focused on performance and getting many performance enhancements into Weblogic Server 7.0.

This will be the death nail for vendors who can't keep up on the performance side. Cause if you can't get the numbers in the game, I can't imagine a customer who would buy from you.

Ultimately, you look at performance numbers and price/performance numbers, and these are the metric that customers need to be evaluating when choosing a J2EE server.

These numbers show that it requires more hardware to get the same performance for a J2EE application running on Webpshere, than on Weblogic. IBM has a lower license/cpu cost than Weblogic, but the overall cost of running an app on Websphere will be higher than that of Weblogic, due to the need to buy more hardware.

Check out http://ecperf.theserverside.com/.

Discuss the New ECPerf results here


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FEATURED TECHNICAL ARTICLES


Portal Standards
By Stefan Hepper and Thomas Schaek

In TheServerSide exclusive, JSR 168 (Java Portlet API) specification Leads Stefan Hepper and Thomas Schaek present an article on the need for the Java Portlet API and Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP) standards. With these standards in place, application providers or portal customers can write portlets, or visual, user-facing web services independent of a specific enterprise portal product.

Read the article here


Developing Interoperable Web Services Series:
Integrating Java and Microsoft .NET
By Zdenek Svoboda

In this fifth part of the Web services tutorial we will learn how to write interoperable Web services. We will focus on examples that involve the integration of MS .NET and Java and demonstrate that Web services technology gives us the opportunity to pick the best technology for each particular piece of our system. Specifically, we can use the MS .NET framework on the client side to enable easy integration with common Office technologies, while still using the powerful and portable Java model for scalable server-side applications.

Read the article here


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 This newsletter sponsored in part by HP
Some of the best things in life are free
With its revolutionary service-oriented architecture, Hewlett-Packard Application Server 8.0 (HP-AS) represents a generational leap in the J2EE application server market. HP-AS includes standards-based Core Services Framework, J2EE 1.3 support, developer tools, optimized load balancing, comprehensive trailmaps and more. Download HP-AS Free.


UPCOMING HARD CORE TECH TALKS




Get leading edge information on current J2EE issues and trends from those who know it best, the gurus and grandmasters, in Hard Core Tech Talks! Videos Hosted on HostJ2EE.com. Featured this week is Glen Martin, who will talk about the evolution and future of J2EE. Featured last week was Craig McClanahan who discusses The Struts Framework.

Glen Martin - J2EE Senior Product Manager, Sun Microsystems

In this interview, Glen discusses how J2EE API's take shape, the JCP, and the evolution of the EJB spec. He addresses various issues that have affected the spec's development, the improvements it has undergone, and talks about the future of J2EE.



Craig McClanahan - Primary Developer, Struts Framework

In this interview, Craig talks about presentation layer programming with JSP's, and decoupling of the presentation layer from the business logic layer. He also describes JSR127, a GUI component model for web pages, and how it can be integrated withthe STRUTS framework.

Check out Hard Core Tech Talks


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ENTERPRISE JAVA EDUCATION STRATEGIES


How should your company embrace web services?

There's been a lot of hype recently about web services. Some claim web services are the next great thing. Others claim it's just fluff. So what's the reality? And more importantly, what are some best practices for your company to move from an application architecture to a web services architecture? Find out by learning how to program real-world web services systems in The Middleware Company's 5-day XML & Web Services course. This course is being held across the country and can also be customized and held at your company. All you need is a week of time, funding from your company, and a few co-workers who also want to learn about web services. Visit http://www.middleware-company.com, contact sales@middleware-company.com, or call toll-free +1 (877) 866-JAVA for more details. Don't let this turn into a good idea that never happens--take action now!


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NEW APPLICATION SERVER REVIEWS


Review of iPortal Application Server
By Kartik Pandya

I am a grad student building a portal for our university (UMass, Boston) which will be accessed by many students, faculties and staff. We chose IONA iPortal App Server for this because installation, configuration and deployment is very easy. The best part is speed: because iPAS is built on CORBA C++ technology, it's way faster than Weblogic and J2EE RI. iPAS is built on IONA's Orbix technology. You get SSL and TLS plugins. They run like a rock. iPAS also gives high availabily and load balancing as you can run multiple instances of app servers very easily on a single machine.

Read the rest of the review here.


Review of JRun Application Server
By Richard Martin

JRun was initially selected because it appeared to be a fully-featured, certified J2EE Application Server at a very reasonable price. Initially, it impresses: it installed easily on both Solaris and Windows. Deployment seems to be going fine, until you realize that this is simply because JRun is not reporting the problems. We wanted to use JMS for asynchronous communication with another part of our system, only to find that the message server is only available within JRun, it is not exposed externally.

Read the rest of the review here.

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UPCOMING CONFERENCES


BEA eWorld 2002 will feature over 125 technical sessions, including new Extreme Tech sessions; a look inside (and your very own beta copy of) BEA’s forthcoming Cajun technology for rapidly building enterprise-class web services; demonstrations of the latest BEA and partner products; keynotes from industry leaders such as Sun, Intel and BEA; birds-of-a-feather discussions; book signings with some of the leading Java and BEA authors, and an exhibit hall showcasing more than 150 companies.
Don't miss the Keynote by Ed Roman and Floyd Marinescu's talk An Architects Guide to EJB Design Patterns.

Members of TheServerSide can get a $200 discount by using promotional code “USER-JAVAUG” when you register at http://www.bea.com/events/eworld/2002/.





April 22 - 26, San Jose

The SD Software Development Conference & Expo is a 5 day show that will feature over 180 classes & tutorials on J2EE, .NET, XML, Web Services and more. The show features some very cool J2EE talks including:

Visit: www.sdexpo.com to register. TheServerSide members can use code 2WSPON to save $300!


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NEW J2EE PATTERNS


User Interface Validator Pattern
By Vivek Venugopalan

The User Interface Validator is a design pattern for user interface validations that treats the validation rules as data, making it easily configurable and maintainable. The User Interface Validator not only reduces development time but also makes maintainence and bug fixing easy since a change in validation rules only requires a change in the rule data.

Read more on this pattern.


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KEY J2EE INDUSTRY HEADLINES

Apache Software Foundation on Warpath over Java Licencing

The Apache Software Foundation's battle with Sun Microsystems stepped up a gear last week as the open source community called on Sun to discontinue licences prohibiting Java compatible open source implementations, and make compatibility testing more accessible for them and other open source initiatives such as JBoss.

Click here to read more.

JSR 88: J2EE Deployment API Proposed Final Draft

JSR 88, the J2EE Deployment API Specification Proposed Final Draft is available for download. JSR 88 describes an open standard for deploying J2EE applications to a J2EE platform. This API allows any tool to deploy J2EE applications to any J2EE platform.

Click here to read more.

The Middleware Company announces "EJB for Architects" Tour

The Middleware Company has announced that it is bringing its popular "EJB for Architects" training course on a multi-city tour across the US, and in London, England. EJB for Architects is an advanced course for people who already know EJB, covering issues such as design patterns, large-scale system design issues, case studies, legacy integration, etc.

Click here to read more.

Latest version of Orion J2EE AppServer released

Orion 1.5.4 has been released. This new version provides important features such as local interfaces, many to many relationships, cascade-deletes, automatic primary keys (primary key class set to java.lang.Object), and more.

Click here to read more.

Sun shifts core Java unit from US to Bangalore, India

Sun has moved its Java tools and libraries division from its Palo Alto technology centre to Bangalore, India. Sun decided to shift the core work to Bangalore due to three key factors: to optimally use the engineering skill-sets available here, to beat the slowdown and to stay closer to the market.

Click here to read more.



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