Hi,

JRun team is conducting a survey to get the users' feedback. This feedback will be very valuable in deciding features for the next JRun release (codenamed - Cheetah). The survey is available at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=668831359384

The survey is very concise and will take 5 minutes to fill in. If you'd like to have a say in the next version of JRun? Do you think these types of surveys are useful in helping get the features that you would like to see or are in need of be implemented?

This is interesting on a number of levels.

Back In The Day, at my old company we used JRun for our application, and had generally good results with it. It was simply a servlet/JSP container at the time. Heck, we didn't even have WARs at the time. But it was easily accessible, affordable, and we encountered few "JRun" bugs that I can recall. I haven't tried their EJB container, I have heard anecdotally that it has had some problems.

But running JRun back then was the fruition of the promise of what Java is today.

When we started that project, we were running against Netscape's server and container, and we were getting inexplicable server freeze ups and little help from Netscape support. Due to time pressures, rather than fighting Netscape support, we instead took a day to port to Apache/Tomcat, and then later JRun on Solaris.

Later, we had the system running on JRun on Windows.

So, even at the young age, we had a server application that survived literally unscathed from three different application servers across two different OS's and databases (we had to port from Oracle to SQL Server as well). And we did that kind of porting in "internet time" as they said.

What's interesting about this survey is that it shows that Macromedia/Adobe is still in this middle market, even with the pressures from below by Tomcat, JBoss, and Sun, as well as from above by IBM and BEA, and the plethora of other application servers.

So, I hope this survey is simply an indicator at the overall health and size of the Java Application server market as a whole.

But it was easily accessible, affordable, and we encountered few "JRun" bugs that I can recall.

I had the same expirence.

I used to work for Pilot Networks and we hosted a few thousand General Electric Web servers. They went out of business shortly after the .com bubble burst. Anyway. They used a combination of Jrun, Netscape Application Server, and some JServ. I have to say at the time Jrun was far and above the others in performance and stability. I have not used the product since Macromedia bought it, but it seems to have lost its reputation over time. Anyone know why?

I made the same experience with JRun.
There were no other decent application servers available - and back then JRun was ahead of pretty much any other piece of software that called itself "application server".
There were a few bugs but the server startup was pretty fast and performance was also not bad. In combination with our favourite IDE ("KAWA") we were able to deliver a couple of powerful applications. Too bad they gave up (slowed down?) the development of JRun...

Rias A. Sherzad
sherzad.com

we had the same experience...it had the best management GUI by miles and version 4 was pretty reliable. We used v3 for a few years which was basically the old allaire server and we had loads of problems with it, but they rewrote it for v4 and it was a much better tool.

the paid support was good too, they were always prompt and courteous in response to any problems. good to see they haven't given up on jrun, i thought they had dropped the ball and weren't going to try and support the new j2ee specs.

It was the first server our components where deployed on!

Marina
http://www.servletsuite.com

http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=69&threadid=796299

I think JRun should build new versions based on Geronimo.

What they should do is to provider a nicer GUI and management
tool. Optimize it on managing and performance.

Wei Jiang
Perfecting Java EE!

What a shock, the way its was de-emphasized on the web site ( post takerovers etc ) I was sure it was scheduled for termination.

And here it is, with resources allocated!

Jrun's kernel architecture has some similarities with Geronimos GBean design. Although I haven't seen any in depth articles comparing them I wondered if it was in any way an inspiration.

JRun 4 was originally hoped to be based on JBoss. The LGPL raised some dicey conflicts with the Sun license at the time, and Sun hadn't figured out what to do about open sourced J2EE servers and J2EE certification. So what resulted was a very JBoss-like implementation, using a microkernel design for the server with services plugged in as JMX MBeans.

Until recently I worked for a company that uses JRun - they needed a servlet container that wasn't open source (due to marketing/sales reasons) and was cheap.. We didn't need all the bells and whistles and costs associated with them. JRun worked fine and did what it was supposed too.

Has Many Years to Go

I've been with JRun since it was Live Software. It was good then when other Java Application servers are complex and expensive such as Netscape, WebLogic, GemStone, Websphere. It has the place in history and I still believe it has many years to go since there still is a market for it. Companies that don't want to spend their budgets on expensive servers and support and companies that don't want to take the opensource road.

It doesn't make sense for Adobe/Macromedia to terminate JRUN Development..

Coldfusion MX depends on it (CFMX 6, and 7).. The Enterprise Edition (CFMX 7 MultiServer) actually run ontop JRUN 4.. There's a lot of ColdFusion installations out there, probably more so than JRUN..

Next Version Adobe JRun : Beta Available

Beta release of next version of JRun appserver, code named Cheetah, is available. Adobe JRun Team is inviting serious evaluators to give feedback on this beta release. Contact 'vrreddy at adobe dot com' to be included in the Beta program.

We believe Beta of JRun Cheetah is reasonably stable and reliable. And we plan to reward those who prove otherwise. We intend to give away fully functional JRun licenses to the users who report highest quality issues during the Beta.

What More ! We are throwing open a JRun Sample Apps Challenge. We invite the beta users to develop sample applications exploiting the new JRun Cheetah feature sets. The best apps developed by you will be rewarded, and on qualification, will be featured as part JRun releases in samples section.

Write Code, find Bugs ! Help us serve you better.

Regards,
Vijayan Reddy,
Adobe JRun Team.