Right Tool For the Right Job

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I wanted to start a discussion what is the better choice for an application server when building an enterprise J2E application? Should one go for a Tomcat + Spring combination which provide light-weight simplified alternative to JEE container or should more heavy weight app server like JBoss be considered?

I have found some resources on Stackoverflow that provided me enough information to think about:

  1. What are benefits of JBoss AS-based application architecture?
  2. When to ditch a J2EE container (i.e. JBoss) for straight Tomcat
  3. Should I go with Tomcat or a full J2EE container?

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Comments
  • Martin Wildam September 4, 2010 at 8:35 pm

    I have several use cases where I either think of staying away for any of those containers tomcat/glassfish and even apache.

    There is a http server included in Java 6 and with a little templating you could provide already simple sites for small applications.

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  • Yannick Majoros August 28, 2010 at 11:44 pm

    I think what they say is just not true. Tomcat + Spring is not simpler than Java EE. Not since Java EE 5, anyway. My opinion is that Spring was useful some time ago. Not anymore.

    Been using Glassfish 2 (Java EE 5) and 3 (Java EE 6), it justs gets better and easier with time. Oracle OC4J looked promising, we used it for a couple of months before having to switch to sun for political reasons. Didn’t try jboss, though. I wouldn’t look at tomcat anymore.

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    • Alexander Zagniotov September 4, 2010 at 10:00 am

      Hi Yannick,

      I have never used Glassfish. So most probably I cannot grasp the pros and conns of it yet … Can you give an example of how it gets better and easier with time?

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    • Alexander Zagniotov September 4, 2010 at 10:08 am

      Also, sure I understand that using an app server you get a lot of things already included and made easier for you. You need to rely less and less on a third party plugins. But, don’t you agree that the convenience often comes at a price? On the other hand, these days some people are not concerned as much whether solution is heavy weight or light weight. Hardware is cheap and they just want to have a stable solution.

      I guess what I want to say is, your choice of tools should depend on the complexity of your software product.

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