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Choose the Right J2EE Application Server for You
There's a lot to consider when choosing a J2EE server: cost, scalability, support, standards compliance, etc.—all of which you must prioritize based on the type of environment your server supports.
By Steve Franklin
Moving to a Java-based server solution is a sound decision; there are several good reasons for doing so. Among them are platform support, scalability, code portability and reuse across tiers, and EJB strengths. The hard part is choosing the best J2EE platform for your project from the large number of options and configurations available—a critical decision.
Choosing the wrong server could mean more system downtime than your site can afford, an inability to scale as your site grows, and slow responses to heavy site traffic—all of which lead to a slow site and lost visitors (i.e., revenue).
To be sure you choose correctly, determine which selection criteria are most important to your project. The types of projects I will cover include:
From there, you need to decide how much hands-on evaluation is necessary to accurately select the right software solution. This article will help you manage the planning and evaluation phase.
Performance
Priority Ranking for "Performance" by Project Type
Slow sites lose visitors. One of the key rules to designing a Web site is to keep it responsive. Performance is impacted by a number of factors, and the application server certainly is one of them. Along with ensuring that scalability allows performance to grow in an effective manner, also make sure that the app server implementation is efficient. Consider the following questions:
- Which JDK is incorporated within the app server, and how fast is it?
- Is connection pooling implemented, and have we tested it sufficiently? Is JDBC 2.0 adequately supported? Have they provided their own stable and optimized drivers?
- What caching features are supplied by the app server?
- How efficient are some of the transaction mechanisms supported by the app server? Will I make use of these?
- Have I stress tested EJB components adequately? How efficiently are these pooled?
- Does the application server tie efficiently into Web servers to ensure fast response between the Web request and handling by the application server?
- If using CMP (container-managed persistence), how efficient is the implementation (i.e., is the SQL optimized prior to submission or is there lots of chatty interaction with the database)?
Ideally, an app server responds well to load tests, even as a single instance. Application servers max out at widely different concurrent task measures for a given set of hardware. Test to see if performance is adequate for your current needs, budget, and configuration. Confirm that performance can grow cost effectively through scalability options down the road.
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