Integration

I'm in disagreement with you. I installed the Oracle App Server 10g in 10 minutes. And I think this is very fast. Moreover there is a preinstalltion check when you install the AS to check if you have for example the right OS patches installed. So you don't need any pre-knowledge. Furthermore there are standardized benchmarks called specjappserver. Regarding these benchmarks Oracle AS is faster than WebSphere. And this is reflected in all benchmarks I did against WebSphere. For me is the documentation adaequate. Quality comes first.

Regards

Kersten

Thanks for your answer. but my questions are:

1) How did you install Oracle App Server in 10 minutes? I installed it on a P4 2.8 with 1GB of DDR RAM and it took about 3 hours for full installation of Infra Structure and Application Server and configuring All the services.

2) Would you tell me more about the Benchmarks you did and how to perform them myself?

3) About needing pre-knowledge i meant that there are too many parameters one must know to install Oracle App Server but there are few for WebSphere. Don't you agree?

4) Would you tell more about the better quality of Oracle?

-------
P.S: I installed on Windows 2000 Advanced Server

Thanks,
S. Shafieian

Hello S. Shafieian,

1.) I installed the Java Edition in 10 minutes, otherwise you can't compare it to IBM WebSphere (J2EE Server).
If you want to compare the following components for example with IBM then you have to install different IBM WebSphere (WS) products (some examples):
J2EE Application Server: OracleAS vs WS Application Server
Enterprise Portal: OracleAS vs WS Portal
EAI: OracleAS vs WS Bus. Int. Server
B2B Integration: OracleAS vs WS Bus. Connection
WebCache: OracleAS vs WS Edge Server
Wireless: OracleAS vs WS Everyplace Access
Ad-hoc Query/Reporting: OracleAS vs No Suitable IBM Product

WebSphere is a bundle of middleware infrastructure products from IBM. It comprises:

* Application server: WebSphere Application Server
* Enterprise portal: WebSphere Portal
* Application Integration: WebSphere Business Integration Toolset (a.k.a. IBM CrossWorlds)
* B2B Integration: WebSphere Business Connection Server
* Web Cache: WebSphere Edge Server
* Wireless: WebSphere Everyplace Access
* Personalization: WebSphere Personalization
* and many other products (overall Websphere comprises different 90 products with overlapping functions)

Try to install some of these products and try to integrate these products. This might be a nightmare. The analyst
Primary Intelligence did a survey to IBM customer to find out what experiences the IBM customer did have with IBM WebSphere (www.primary-intel.com). Here are some interesting facts:
- 93% found integration of WS components more complex than expected
- 90% had difficulties during implementation
- WS complexity causes cost/time overruns:
-- 95% with time overruns blamed it
-- 57% with cost overruns blamed it
- ¼ were ‘happy’ with WS; ¼ were ‘unhappy’

2.) I did benchmarks for customers which I can't share to you. But build your own application and try to compare it and you will see the results. Don't forget to tune both app server. And as I mentioned it earlier in the customer benchmarks I did Oracle was the winner.

3.) sPlease see comment 1: try to install these other components from IBM and I believe that you have more parameters to be aware of.

4.) This topic references to your documentation statement.
Quality comes first not quantity.

Regards

Kersten

Hi Kersten,
Thanks so much for your precious reply.
But for the development only purposes i think that OC4J or JRun or even Tomcat may be enough. I also still can't decide between Oracle App Server and BEA WebLogic. I think a very good advantage of WebLogic is that it's supported by nearly all the J2EE development tools. So after ignoring WebSphere my choices become Oracle App Server and BEA WebLogic.

Thanks again,
S. Shafieian

Saeed, Hello

I am making the same decision. Actually I have tested weblogic, jboss and oc45.

Unfortunately between these only oc45 supports J2EE 1.4 (http://java.sun.com/j2ee/compatibility.html). Websphere is very fast and attractive but seems developing with it (using its special features and libs) will make big problems if you plan to move to another app. server in future. People say BEA has tried to lock developers to weblogic.

Another factor is price. Websphere and weblogic are very expensive in comparison to OC45. (BEA is very very expensive).

Another thing that I have considered is that people prefer to concentrate on a single vendor for a single application (myself to some extents).

But I myself do not agree with the benchmarks published by Oracle which compare BEA on a Windows Server with OC45 with on a Linux!!! (result is obvious). And I personally think such benchmarks are not professional in any way and make me feel bad.

Anyway recently JBoss has implemented all 1.4 features including Web services and they have released their RC1.
Just today it has appeared in the approved J2EE 1.4 providers (and I am very happy to see this).Take a look at it and consider that JBoss is completely free for development and deployment.

Regards,
Siamak
ProgrammerNet.org

Hi Siamak,
Thanks for your answer. I also agree with you in that BEA is very expensive and some of its generated codes are BEA specific. But i don't know anything about OC45. I would be so glad if you tell more about it.
Recently my company has switched its Development Platform from JDeveloper and JBuilder to Eclipse. So we would likely use Open Source software with it and because of its high flexibility we aren't committed to using any particular tools or softwares.

Regards,
S.Shafieian

Hi Kersten

In you post on Aug 3, 2004, you mentioned some of the
interesting facts found in www.primary-intel.com on
customers feedback on IBM Websphere, the document
could not be found.

Do you have recent docs on the feedback level of IBM
customers on IBM Websphere Portal 6.0 ?

I am doing a Portal Study on IBM Websphere Portal
6.0 vs SAP NetWeaver Architecture - Portal component.

Do you have any views if I re-develop client server
applications using IBM Websphere Portal 6.0 and
integrate with SAP 4.6c ?

Btw, do you have any idea what IBM products I need to
do the above (ie convert client appls to web applications)

Thanks for your advice.

regards
Vincent Tham
Email : VincentTham@sgpoolz.com.sg


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This is a very old thread, but I just can't believe no one dares compare the two platforms any more. Is it simply that people stick to one and do not feel confident enough to judge the other?

Based on my experience, I can compare OSB and IBM Websphere's equivalent, mediation flows. I am an experienced programmer/analyst, but I can't claim to be proficient in either SOA or Java. I started working in parallel on two projects, one using OSB and the other Websphere, without any experience whatsoever in either of them.

I found OSB to be trustworthy, powerful and overall a product I would happily use in another project.
I found Websphere to be slow, irritating, buggy, overreaching and generally a very poor tool.

Let me elaborate.

OSB does a few things and it does them well. The Workshop features are not very helpful, so you need to spend most of your time writing XQuery transformations. If you want to do anything more elaborate than simple mediation flows, you will find yourself configuring the Weblogic server and using JDeveloper. But I was able to cover the needs of a small telco order management processes without ever installing JDeveloper, just because XQuery is so damn cool.

Your first impression of Websphere is that it's slow. It takes forever to install and every single click needs a mainframe to process. Deploying and testing the simplest transformation will take you at least a couple of minutes. The second thing you learn is how to clean build, redeploy restart the server etc, because the 6-7 layers IBM uses have a tendency to screw things up. As you move along, you also learn not to trust the WID gui. It may tell you that something is ok, but that does not mean it's going to work. These guys spent so much time adding useless features, that they forgot to write the code to implement them.

Both Oracle's and IBM's support stink. If you're lucky, you'll get someone with a clue, but most of the time you're on your own. The cool thing about OSB is that you never need to contact support, unless you're trying to do something really tricky. With IBM, you need to be constantly aware that it might not be you that did something wrong, it might be the terrible software that misinterpreted what you were doing (oh, you were trying to toggle a boolean x=not(y)? well, we won't tell you what you did wrong, but we will give you a bunch of cryptic error messages at runtime, or even better, we will just return false every time, without ever telling you why).

You might be able to tell I'm a little frustrated with IBM. Just keep in mind that when I started the two projects, I had no previous experience with either SW and I have no biases whatsoever. It's not my fault that IBM has forced me to try and stay away from Websphere for the rest of my life.