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Application Server Comparison Information Links Third Party Products Articles for Web Developers e-Business Tools WebObjects


Application Servers

Many of our customers would like to know what is the best technology on which to build their Internet-enabled business systems. Although the answer is far from straightforward, it helps to have the basic facts to compare them. That is the purpose of this article. For more details on various aspects of Business Application Servers, including a comparison of WebObjects with many of the products listed below, see the excellent set of articles at http://www.MacKiDo.com. There is also a very detailed 1997 study done by NASA comparing 17 middleware tools.

The following summary is expanded considerably in Business Server Comparison - Details


Summary

Good Points

Bad Points
Webcatalog 4 Quick and easy small-scale application development. Powerful, flexible scripting language. Does not support object oriented programming techniques, therefore, code can not be reused. Many built-in features for e-Commerce.
  • Focussed on Web-based e-commerce
  • Powerful and flexible script can do just about anything
  • RAM-based for high performance
  • No development tools
  • Script is difficult to understand
  • No support for object-based design
  • Doesn't scale well
  • Embeds logic in the web page
Filemaker Pro 5 (Unlimited) & Web Companion

Flexible, easy to learn, sophisticated, intuitive, but poor performance and totally unscaleable.
  • Very powerful relational capabilities
  • Good server-side scripting language
  • Poor performance
  • Single-threaded
  • No support for object-based design
  • Doesn't scale to heavy loads
Cold Fusion

Quick and easy small-scale application development (especially for non-programmers). Does not support object oriented programming techniques, therefore, code can not be reused. Good for large teams managing a great deal of simple static content. Not good for enterprise application development. (10), (12)
  • Not too hard to learn (10)
  • Can be extended with 3rd party
  • No support for object-based design
  • Embeds logic in the web page
  • Not suited to highly dynamic or database content (10)
  • Not suited to business processes (10)
  • Security risk (11)
Microsoft SQL Server 7 and ASP Easy small-scale application development. Flexible scripting language with a wide range of third-party extensions. Does not support object oriented programming techniques, therefore, code can not be reused.
  • Commonly used, so many development tools
  • Can handle large loads
  • Only runs on NT
  • No support for object-based design
  • Little component reuse
  • Embeds logic in the web page
  • Extreme security risk (both ASP and IIS) (11)
Vignette StoryServer 5.0 Good for large teams managing a great deal of static content. Not good for enterprise application development. (6) (9)
  • Manages collections of static content well (9)
  • Generates pages suitable for search engines (7)
  • Not suited to highly dynamic content (9)
  • Poor performance (7)
  • Expensive (7)
  • Difficult to share databases (7)
Lotus Notes/Domino 5.0 Very powerful system well suited to workflow-, e-mail- and document-focussed applications. However its lack of relational database capabilities, and its blending of application with user interface with data, make large-scale database-driven systems expensive and difficult.
  • Commonly used, so many development tools
  • Can handle large loads
  • Runs on many platforms
  • Extensive security
  • Steep developer learning curve
  • Lack of relational or true object capabilities
  • Little component reuse
IBM WebSphere Studio V3.5 Advance Edition
  • Provides a comprehensive set of tools to build dynamic Web applications. Visual layout tool for JavaServer™ Pages (JSPs), HTML, JavaScript and DHTML
  • Allows quick and easy development and maintainance of e-business applications.
  • Tight integration between WebSphere Studio, VisualAge for Java, and WebSphere Application Servers eases collaborative development.
  • Platform independent
  • Well supported technology
  • Incorporates Source Code Management (SCM).
  • Requires very well equipped web servers
  • Testing environment is very slow (JIT is not utilised during development)
  • Requires additional non IBM software (Rational Rose) to create system models.
    • WebObjects 5.0 Very sophisticated and powerful object-oriented system well suited to development of large, robust, scalable business systems with a range of developer roles. Although it has a steep learning curve, each type of developer only needs to learn a subset. Can work with most popular databases and Internet standards.

    Is Pure Java, so will run on any pre-Java (1.3) platform.
    • Object-oriented, from Enterprise Model to code.
    • Optimized object graph maintenance
    • Session management
    • Easy to develop simple Web applications
    • Steep developer learning curve (although simple apps can be built easily with no coding)

    More information is provided in Business Server Comparison - Details

    References

    All unattributed comments are the personal opinion of the author (Thomas Wedderburn-Bisshop) based on years of extensive use (Webcatalog and Filemaker), four medium-sized projects (SQL Server), management of one large project (Lotus Domino), a training course (Cold Fusion and WebSphere) or a number of small and medium-sized projects (WebObjects).

    If you wish to add any information or revise what is here, please contact Thomas Wedderburn-Bisshop of Woomera Net Solutions.

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