Borland has recently announced two new products. Borland Enterprise 5.2 is now shipping with support for J2EE 1.3, JDK 1.4.1, and tighter integration with JBuilder. They've also announced Optimizeit ServerTrace, a tool which gives test teams a high level overview of where time and resources are being spent in a transaction, giving clues as to the source of performance problems.

Check out Borland Enterprise 5.2 and Optimizeit ServerTrace press relase.

I personally have never felt that Borland's Enteprise Server was a serious contender in the AppServer market until i tested this version. Earlier versions did not live up to their expectations. JBuilder 7/8 integration with BES 5.2 is nothing short of impressive and represents the best IDE/AppServer integration i have seen so far. This makes J2EE development easier though the EJB Designer and a lot faster since you don't even have to leave your IDE to start,stop,deploy,undeploy,test,debug your EJBs. I think its a worthy contender for guys who are looking for a scalable J2EE platform up there with the best at an affordable price.

Tinyiko F. Valoyi

It is very difficult for a small vendor in the market.

BES does not have third party support. You need third
party software: third party tools and third party
applications. You need third party consultant services
as well. Without that, people will think twice before
buying BES.

Alex, can you explain to me what "third party support" means. You suggest other J2EE application servers have "third party support", what is it and why must we have it?

Do you know why we have J2EE standards?

My simple requiremnt for a J2EE application server is be standard compliant.

Also, what is "third party support"? Is this like support from Third World Contries?

Personally, after two parties in one evening, ...

Third parties is everyone besides you (customer) and the vendor (Borland). For example, WebLogic had a lot of ISVs (application vendors) writing software that was built for (or even included) WebLogic. I can name a couple dozen companies that did that, including a couple of big names like Ariba.

Borland didn't do as well in that market. OTOH Borland's roots are in development tools, so the integration with the IDE is believably top-notch and impressive. (IBM WSAD is similarly well-coupled with WebSphere.)

Nonetheless, what makes a platform successful is a bounty of applications. If Borland wants more market share, they need to be on the short list for supported/recommended servers for the J2EE applications being sold. You can see that it's a catch-22: getting on the short list means that other companies will do the work to ensure support for your app server.

Peace,

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

I still remember the war between Microsoft Windows and
IBM OS2. OS2 was much better, but it was an empty operating
system without third party tools, nor third party
applications. Microsoft won the war by getting third party support.

Wei
Perfecting J2EE!</p>

Hi guys. I am the product manager for BES AppServer edition. Your comments are very interesting and reflect what we in Borland think our priorities need to be.

I can assure you that moving forward 3rd parties support will not be ignored here. In fact, we are making moves to enhance our product footprint in critical areas, such as EAI, Portals and Workflow. We also try to encourage ISVs to use our server, which provides them with an excellent technical platform to fit their needs.

Best,

Moty Aharonovitz
Sr Product Manager
BES AppServer Edition

> Your comments are very interesting and reflect what
> we in Borland think our priorities need to be.

A year ago (before we released SwiftMQ 3.0.0), I've tried several times (direct mail, newsgroups, etc) to get someone from Borland to integrate SwiftMQ XA/ASF into your app server. No response!

I mean, to have an alternative JMS server for your app server would be 3rd party support or not? Your customers have no choice in JMS. They have to use the bundled SonicMQ OEM thing (which is limited and an old version, as far I know).

Anyway, now it's too late. Life is too short for this. Once you support J2EE 1.4, your customers can use our JCA 1.5 RA. But that's still 1-2 years ahead.

-- Andreas

The Astronomer's club at school used to support Forth Parties!

<George de la Torre>
Also, what is "third party support"? Is this like support from Third World Contries?
</George de la Torre>

Be nice. You will not win customers or third parties by
saying harsh words. You have attitude problem, this is why.

Your JBuilder is VERY nice. You invite people to write
open tools for it. You ship third partie's open tools with
JBuilder companion CD. Most of these tool venders come from
"fourth world contries".

BES is VERY nice as well. You should learn from JBuilder
group to build support.

I've used BES for development with JBuilder, but why would anyone buy it for a production system when they can use JBoss for free? I am suprised Borland is even continuing to spend money on BES development. I guess there's pressure on each company to have their own app server.