BZ Research has announced their most recent research which shows JBoss as the most used application server, and Eclipse taking a large lead on the desktop.

In a new question this year, respondents were asked what they were integrating with their Java applications. More than half (52 percent) said they were integrating them with other Java apps. But Java was not restricted to other Java apps or to Unix-related operating systems. Twenty-eight percent said they were connecting to legacy Windows applications, and just over 21 percent (21.2) said they were connecting to Microsoft’s .NET Framework. More than 27 percent (27.5), said they were integrating Java apps with non-Java apps on Unix or Linux. And 24.3 percent of the survey respondents said they were using Java to connect with mainframe and midrange applications.

Read more: Open Source Dominates Java Landscape

I wonder if the devil's new weapon are statistics... ;)

Here is the public part of the survey, which describes methodology and the questionnaire.

Sample size is 949 respondents, all SD Times subscribers. Response ratio is about 1:15. Around here pre-election surveys are have about same sample with (statistic) population size of 1 million. But they have a stratified sample, unlike here where the sample is inherently biased. And they still off the mark by a few (1-5%) percent points for "leaders" (ie. parties that get 15-30% of the vote).

I'd take these results with a (big) grain of salt. For example, the "Other" category for app. servers is surprisingly large (21%). I wonder what got stuffed into it - "Tomcat", "our in-house framework called Framework 3.5.1", "WebLogic Express", "JBos", "don't know", "none"... The story for the last few years was that app. server space is consolidating, wasn't it? And SD Times artice does not mention how large was this category last year...

I think this is the 2003 study, although the 2004 study was probably done using a similar methodology.

My biggest qualm with this (and most) surveys is that there is no indication of how the products are being used, only that the respondee is aware that the product is "in use" in their organization. Given the reported percentages, a large percentage of organizations are using multiple J2EE App Servers (and at least 21.2% also have .Net).

It might be more useful to understand how organizations decide when to use one App Server over another (e.g. no rules, one solution for the intranet another for the Internet, let each project decide from a closed list, etc.). The

There are a number of other factors that could also cause bias. For example, if an organization uses MQ Series (now WebSphere MQ) for connectivity, are they using the app server or not? I'm also surprised that SAP doesn't have a larger share of the "App Server" market than JRun, given the fact that more and more of SAP's installed base is being required to use it, at least for very specific tasks.

Finally, it would be nice to get an idea of the profile of the companies being reported on (size, industry, etc.) and whether there were a lot of companies duplicated in the survey.

"It might be more useful to understand how organizations decide when to use one App Server over another (e.g. no rules, one solution for the intranet another for the Internet, let each project decide from a closed list, etc.)."

The list of how a organization decides on app servers is pretty easy.

(i) Politics. I have often seen a companies choice of technologies based on some VPs, CTO's technology background. Often their knowledge is either out of date or they receive advice from a "friend" who will make big money out of the deal if they will just sign on the line.

(ii) Cost. If you are short on cash than JBoss on top of MySQL or Postgress is often a winner.

(iii) More money than sense. A Company buys the full BEA suite because its comes in a nice box.

(iv) The right tool for the job. This is generally a rare occurence.

I have to say my experience is very similar. The right tool for the right job is rare in my experience. The only times I've seen it happen is when developers sneak it under the radar. Once it's in production, it usually stays there, though it does have negative consequences.

I think this is the 2003 study, although the 2004 study was probably done using a similar methodology.

Oh crap, I completetly overlooked the dates on the summary...

My biggest qualm with this (and most) surveys is that there is no indication of how the products are being used, only that the respondee is aware that the product is "in use" in their organization.
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For example, if an organization uses MQ Series (now WebSphere MQ) for connectivity, are they using the app server or not?

This is a common allegation from BEA (which does not mean that it is false). WebSphere brand is huge and product branded with it usually do not use the app server at all. Although worst offenders (e.g. CICS Transaction Server) don't have "WebSphere" in the name, but are only grouped under this umbrella.

Similar thing might be going on with Oracle app server as well, as it is a prerequisite for quite some applications from Oracle Application Suite. Caveat from the next paragraph still applies, though.

Also, I suspect that almost all J2EE developers have used JBoss at some point, either for learning or to try what you get for $0.

I'm also surprised that SAP doesn't have a larger share of the "App Server" market than JRun, given the fact that more and more of SAP's installed base is being required to use it, at least for very specific tasks.

This is probably just a (branding) perception artifact. Remember, the criterion is "aware that the product is "in use" in their organization". From my experience SAP is regarded as a big monolithic chunk by those that don't have to use it. And most people (SAP administrators *and* J2EE developers) are not thrilled by having something deployed on it...

Isn't XMLSpy both the most popular application server and IDE ?

This isn't "research". This is an unscientific poll of SD Times subscribers: "This study of 759 SD Times subscribers was conducted in November 2004."

nice results, but where is IntelliJ IDE!!!!!!

For the person who asked about intelliJ it is in the full table (on the SD Times paper).
The rest of the table looks something like this:
Oracle JDeveloper 16.1%
IntelliJ 11%
...
J# .NET 8.5% (who the hell uses this one?)
BEA Workshop 8.5%
...
Sun Studio Creator 4.2%
...

Jobserve.com shows other results.

 JBoss related vacancies: 41
 Weblogic related vacancies: 200
 Websphere related vacancies: 206

 Ummm. I think job search engines/portals are the most trustable source of statistics: "What the guys with the money are willing to pay for". What's also clear is that JBoss deployments have increased quite a lot -two years ago JBoss was a completly unknown in Jobserve or Dice-, so maybe in one or two years JBoss could lead the Ap. Server arena.

 I also notice that Java to Net ratio is around 3 to 1 in favor of Java (10 to 1 in some contexts like server development), that doesn't match the (hidden interest) FUD that promotes .Net is going to overtake Java soon.

jobserve.com:

EJB - 144
Hibernate - 13

jobserve.com:EJB - 144
Hibernate - 13

What do u mean? Remember that EJB is much more than just persistence. We can't conclude anything based on these numbers.

Jobserve.com shows other results.
JBoss related vacancies: 41
Weblogic related vacancies: 200
Websphere related vacancies: 206

Also consider that the larger companies and larger projects will tend toward Weblogic and Websphere, so they will use more employees for an average app being deployed to one of those platforms.

That doesn't necessarily invalidate the BZ poll (which is little better than a web poll anyway). From my own experience over the past year, which is not at all representative of the entire market because it's only related to clustering, we've seen steady growth of Weblogic, and surprisingly (in my opinion) high growth of Websphere. Those are still the two major ones in the high end.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Shared Memories for J2EE Clusters