Sun has released the latest version of its Java application server software, and as in the past, has made it available for free download to developers, TechWeb reports.
What is an ‘application server’ ? Is Tomcat an application server?
Tomcat is a servlet container and web server. Now that may be application server to you me and the cat but its not the same as the item under discussion here which is a J2EE application server.
The J2EE applicaton server must implement the full J2EE spec includings support for Enterpise Java Beans, JNDI, Transactions, Mail, Messaging and Connectors most of which Tomcat pure doesn’t do.
Take a look at Apache Geronimo which is in incubation at the moment. Its intended to be a full oss J2EE App Server. You can tell they are serious because its based on Jetty rather than hulking, creaking Tomcat. You can also tell that they are true open source because they are already feuding with other open source projects e.g. JBoss.
Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8 is a small footprint (less than 40 MB) and uses only 163 MB of memory at startup time enabling it to run effectively in even the most constrained server environment.
Sigh. Merely 163Mb at startup?!?!!?!?!?!
Holy machine upgrades, Sun-man!!!
I’d hate to know how much memory it takes when it’s actually running a Java app… probably a gig or two…
Gotta love Sun’s strategy… hand out the free server-killer bloatware… and then hope the customer comes in for a server upgrade.
More likely the server gets canned and replaced by a cheap box running LAMP.
I’d hate to know how much memory it takes when it’s actually running a Java app… probably a gig or two…
If you did much Java web development, this is not bad actually. One of our current projects uses java, and we used tomcat in our dev system, and it easily used 300-400 mb at startup. The production system ran BEA, and it was even more… the thing though is that it was stable at that.. didn’t flucuate much. Java apps use a lot of caching, hence the heavy mem usage. Mem usage in favor of better performance. And no, I don’t want to hear whining about performance from Java…. most of those who complain, have never really done much with it to have any knowledge to speak on the subject.
Actually if you ever been around serious enterprise systems running Bea WebLogic or IBM WebSphere demaning manipulation of a lot objects in memory, the minimum heap size is generally set at least at 1GB and sometimes even higher. Sorry to disappoint you, but you are going to need a lot of heap to be able support thousands of concurrent transactions that are not going to be commited for days on end. Application servers are targetted at something more than some small time run-of-the-mill web apps you’re probably so used to, 160MB is peanuts for application servers.
remember this is for real servers, and not that 486 running running slack in you broom closet dishing out mp3s. Real servers are the ones that need Intel PAE or are at least that range. And hardware is easier to buy them product. There comes a point where it is easier, cheaper, and more effective to throw hardware at a problem and use a better structured language (Java)then take the extra months of developer time (which is also a cost don’t forget)to properly debug C. Java isn’t the most effecient running, but C isn’t the most effecient to write, and time == money.
“Actually if you ever been around serious enterprise systems running Bea WebLogic or IBM WebSphere”
Sorry, but noone has ever called IBM WebSphere a “serious enterprise system” except IBM brochures and market-droids that force this horror of Application Servers upon suffering enterprise programmers.
Hate to break it to the “enterprise app server” people, but bloatware is a serious problem in the IT software market.
Companies do not want to have to buy giant machines with heaps and heaps of memory just to run J2EE. And it’s not just memory… but processors as well. J2EE is not a speed demon with all its many layers of infrastructure and abstraction.
There really is no third-party neutral party ROI study that has been done on J2EE. It is a bloated standard with many parts that simply don’t work well. The entire programming model is hard to understand, hard to code for, and nearly impossible to test. From all the empirical data I have seen, it looks like J2EE is just like CRM — for most customers, a negative ROI.
In the next few years, there will be something that comes along and replaces J2EE. It won’t be .NET as .NET is just as bloated and poorly designed as Java. Well, it is a Java copy so what did you expect. It might be slightly better, but it’s still a version of the Titanic that just takes slightly longer to sink.
> In the next few years, there will be something that comes along and replaces J2EE.
Wishful thinking, there is absolutely nothing that would even remotely be a more or less adquate replacement for J2EE on the horizon. J2EE is fine as it is, it could definitely use some improvements here and there, but it is a damn fine platform and if anything it is destined to grow even more significant in the future. J2EE is already the biggest game in town with .NET somewhere on the outskirts.
Well, .NET memory usage is the biggest problem in our project as you can’t tune it’s memory usage via startup parameters. so will use 20mb for a hello world win forms app and will easily used 50mb for trival apps. So compared to a full Enterprise Framework using 160mb. .NET sucks.
Sorry. Thems the facts.
O. In .NET remoting between two apps on the same machine. Disable the network card and watch the exceptions!! Remote sucks in .NET. And you are suck with the single vendor buggy version!!
Having used C# and .NET for a while, it is plain to see both the language and the gargantuan runtime are poorly designed.
The word that seems most appropriate is “heavy”.
While Microsoft has cleaned up a few things compared to Java, they have also lost some flexibility compared to Java. C# is plainly not a language designed by a brilliant person, but an incrementally evolved Java clone.
As for .NET, it will soon be seen that it is a dead end. Microsoft is doing something completely different for their front-end UI and much of the back-end will also be changed when XEN comes to life.
So .NET is a placeholder. I wouldn’t expect too much worthwhile technical evolution, just the normal feature accumulation you get from Microsoft.
And although it gets moderated down every time, Microsoft has stolen much of their new technology… and the lawsuits will come and they will rock Microsoft to the core.
sun continues to improve it’s offering giving us this excellent product. i’ve tried it and it’s higly recomendable
use it and congratulations sun!
What is an ‘application server’ ? Is Tomcat (http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/) and application server?
What is an ‘application server’ ? Is Tomcat an application server?
Tomcat is a servlet container and web server. Now that may be application server to you me and the cat but its not the same as the item under discussion here which is a J2EE application server.
The J2EE applicaton server must implement the full J2EE spec includings support for Enterpise Java Beans, JNDI, Transactions, Mail, Messaging and Connectors most of which Tomcat pure doesn’t do.
Take a look at Apache Geronimo which is in incubation at the moment. Its intended to be a full oss J2EE App Server. You can tell they are serious because its based on Jetty rather than hulking, creaking Tomcat. You can also tell that they are true open source because they are already feuding with other open source projects e.g. JBoss.
Aidan
Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8 is a small footprint (less than 40 MB) and uses only 163 MB of memory at startup time enabling it to run effectively in even the most constrained server environment.
Sigh. Merely 163Mb at startup?!?!!?!?!?!
Holy machine upgrades, Sun-man!!!
I’d hate to know how much memory it takes when it’s actually running a Java app… probably a gig or two…
Gotta love Sun’s strategy… hand out the free server-killer bloatware… and then hope the customer comes in for a server upgrade.
More likely the server gets canned and replaced by a cheap box running LAMP.
Sigh. Merely 163Mb at startup?!?!!?!?!?!
Holy machine upgrades, Sun-man!!!
I’d hate to know how much memory it takes when it’s actually running a Java app… probably a gig or two…
If you did much Java web development, this is not bad actually. One of our current projects uses java, and we used tomcat in our dev system, and it easily used 300-400 mb at startup. The production system ran BEA, and it was even more… the thing though is that it was stable at that.. didn’t flucuate much. Java apps use a lot of caching, hence the heavy mem usage. Mem usage in favor of better performance. And no, I don’t want to hear whining about performance from Java…. most of those who complain, have never really done much with it to have any knowledge to speak on the subject.
.Nets apps takes even more memory chunk to run.
> Sigh. Merely 163Mb at startup?!?!!?!?!?!
Holy machine upgrades, Sun-man!!!
Actually if you ever been around serious enterprise systems running Bea WebLogic or IBM WebSphere demaning manipulation of a lot objects in memory, the minimum heap size is generally set at least at 1GB and sometimes even higher. Sorry to disappoint you, but you are going to need a lot of heap to be able support thousands of concurrent transactions that are not going to be commited for days on end. Application servers are targetted at something more than some small time run-of-the-mill web apps you’re probably so used to, 160MB is peanuts for application servers.
remember this is for real servers, and not that 486 running running slack in you broom closet dishing out mp3s. Real servers are the ones that need Intel PAE or are at least that range. And hardware is easier to buy them product. There comes a point where it is easier, cheaper, and more effective to throw hardware at a problem and use a better structured language (Java)then take the extra months of developer time (which is also a cost don’t forget)to properly debug C. Java isn’t the most effecient running, but C isn’t the most effecient to write, and time == money.
“Actually if you ever been around serious enterprise systems running Bea WebLogic or IBM WebSphere”
Sorry, but noone has ever called IBM WebSphere a “serious enterprise system” except IBM brochures and market-droids that force this horror of Application Servers upon suffering enterprise programmers.
>>Sorry, but noone has ever called IBM WebSphere a “serious enterprise system”
Goto ebay.com it runs on I BM websphere. We have IBM Websphere 5.1 and weblogic 8.1 running in productoin both are good J2EE app servers
Hate to break it to the “enterprise app server” people, but bloatware is a serious problem in the IT software market.
Companies do not want to have to buy giant machines with heaps and heaps of memory just to run J2EE. And it’s not just memory… but processors as well. J2EE is not a speed demon with all its many layers of infrastructure and abstraction.
There really is no third-party neutral party ROI study that has been done on J2EE. It is a bloated standard with many parts that simply don’t work well. The entire programming model is hard to understand, hard to code for, and nearly impossible to test. From all the empirical data I have seen, it looks like J2EE is just like CRM — for most customers, a negative ROI.
In the next few years, there will be something that comes along and replaces J2EE. It won’t be .NET as .NET is just as bloated and poorly designed as Java. Well, it is a Java copy so what did you expect. It might be slightly better, but it’s still a version of the Titanic that just takes slightly longer to sink.
> In the next few years, there will be something that comes along and replaces J2EE.
Wishful thinking, there is absolutely nothing that would even remotely be a more or less adquate replacement for J2EE on the horizon. J2EE is fine as it is, it could definitely use some improvements here and there, but it is a damn fine platform and if anything it is destined to grow even more significant in the future. J2EE is already the biggest game in town with .NET somewhere on the outskirts.
“.Net even worse”
Total BS.
-G
Well, .NET memory usage is the biggest problem in our project as you can’t tune it’s memory usage via startup parameters. so will use 20mb for a hello world win forms app and will easily used 50mb for trival apps. So compared to a full Enterprise Framework using 160mb. .NET sucks.
Sorry. Thems the facts.
O. In .NET remoting between two apps on the same machine. Disable the network card and watch the exceptions!! Remote sucks in .NET. And you are suck with the single vendor buggy version!!
Having used C# and .NET for a while, it is plain to see both the language and the gargantuan runtime are poorly designed.
The word that seems most appropriate is “heavy”.
While Microsoft has cleaned up a few things compared to Java, they have also lost some flexibility compared to Java. C# is plainly not a language designed by a brilliant person, but an incrementally evolved Java clone.
As for .NET, it will soon be seen that it is a dead end. Microsoft is doing something completely different for their front-end UI and much of the back-end will also be changed when XEN comes to life.
So .NET is a placeholder. I wouldn’t expect too much worthwhile technical evolution, just the normal feature accumulation you get from Microsoft.
And although it gets moderated down every time, Microsoft has stolen much of their new technology… and the lawsuits will come and they will rock Microsoft to the core.