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Product Selection
In the feature comparison between JBoss and JOnAS, both had great showings. The two projects have somewhat differing philosophies behind them. JBoss wants to push the envelope and is spending a lot of effort in getting more
deployments. In the case of JOnAS, the emphasis seems to be on creating a more refined product that is rooted in a more orthodox approach to the J2EE specifications. No doubt due in part to its origins as an in-house product developed by Bull, JOnAS has more of the fit and finish of a commercial product. Ultimately, though, what won us over was JBoss’s ease of use. For research-and-development purposes, JBoss is the better product. The hot redeployment feature is an absolute timesaver in development. More importantly, JBoss allows you to have a running implementation of tomorrow’s J2EE. Projects can be developed against the latest technology and then
deployed to commercial J2EE containers as vendors release versions that comply with those specifications. The clustering support is a nice bonus feature to have available, even though most deployments will not need this. On the other hand, JOnAS seems to offer a more conservative approach to the J2EE specifications that mirrors commercial J2EE containers. It has greater vertical scalability, or better scaling on a single machine, but more limited horizontal
scalability, which is applicable in scenarios with clustered deployments. The emphasis seems to be on incremental improvement rather than revolutionary changes. JBoss held the edge in the feature comparison. In addition, our target deployment is development first and production second. Because JBoss tends to be more on the cutting edge, it makes it possible to get hands-on experience with the latest standards. For these reasons, we will be using JBoss in the remainder of this chapter to explore EJBs in more depth.
