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How IBM (and Open Source) Won eBay
DemonBrew wrote to us with a new article in Business2 how IBM beat MSFT, Sun, BEA Systems to win the contract for the new eBay. Cool part is that it's based on Websphere, which has major open source components.
umm Websphere is based on Apache Webserver... which last time I checked was one of the largest opensource projects EVER
I'm an AIX Systems administrator, and yes I do cry myself to sleep at night....
JCP - Java Community Process
To take right from their website:
The JCP is the way the Java platform evolves. It's an open organization of international Java developers and licensees whose charter is to develop and revise Java technology specifications, reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits. Both Java technology and the JCP were originally created by Sun Microsystems, however, the JCP has evolved from the informal process that Sun used beginning in 1995, to a formalized process overseen by representatives from many organizations across the Java community.
Come on people, do your research before you blab this stuff.
To be more precise, SUN found out that the body was already in Microsoft's pocket, so they took it back.
-- Alastair
JFS - a filesystem is a pretty major component of a server, don't you think?.
developerWorks: Open Source Projects - many more toys for development
Meanwhile, other major vendors jump on the bandwagon with comparitively little (Sun, SGI's XFS which is not open but at least the distribute Linux clue, and HP are on the Linux bandwagon) to none (Microsoft). BEA is one of Sun's happy little Sun ONE minions. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to be a joke for large projects. Go Microsoft indeed.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
XFS is as open as JFS. Get the complete source, GPL'ed even, at http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs.
I wish I had mod points, I'd mod this -1 has no clue.
The ebay software/business logic is highly proprietary and difficult to understand. The story is how IBM sold ebay to use their software which is based on open source technology including apache, linux. Then of course there is java which isnt open source, but "open standard" (ymmv).
Anyways, peer review of complex business logic by people who don't understand it won't help nothing.
- Apache
- XAlan
- Xerces
Having said this, I agree that the opensource bit is a little overstated, since the major part of WebSphere is not opensource at all, but how would it get ontoIt is nice to be in the fantasy land and read one thing and remember another. There is nothing in the article that says that IBM will use any open software. They will use WebSphere and most likely DB2. You will NEVER see the code in the open. WAKE UP!
Closed source parts:
Servlet Engine
EJB
JNDI
JDBC pooling
Clustering
Open source parts:
Web server (Apache) assuming they're using Apache.
XML (xerces, xalan)
Kind of funny that anyone is clueless enough to think that WebSphere is open source.
maybe [t]hey don't need an internal change, but an external one;
But really they've already made an internal change. By embracing Linux and opensource. 2-3 years ago I had heard rumors of IBM revamping AIX to be more like Linux. Whether that's actually happened I don't know, but I see plenty of evidence which says they've certainly embraced Linux itself, as well as opensource. They've pushed the 'stick all your linux on our mainframe' for a while. I can only imagine the internal changes that took place to go from closed and proprietary to open. You won't see MS doing that any time soon.
CIFS per se is an open standard. What makes it difficult to interoperate with Microsoft's implementation of it is that CIFS is used by Microsoft to tunnel RPC calls which do very important tasks (even basic stuff like looking up an user SID to perform an ACL match).
Without those calls filesharing should still be possible, but with VERY limited functionality.
The problem is that (in true Microsoft fashion) there's HUNDREDS of calls, and each of those can have LOTS of variants with widely different results. See any network-related MSDN-documented
information function call. Often you'll find a parameter which is an "info level" or somesuch. Change that parameter, and you change the type of the returned values and obviously the returned data. See this call for an example.
Microsoft's interface design method appears (from the outside) to be something like this:they think in advance, and then they define those interfaces which they MIGHT need five years in the future, and place stubs until then. This has the side-effect that their interfaces have everything AND the kitchen sink, thus the hundreds of calls.
umm Websphere is based on Apache Webserver
umm, -5(Wrong)
IBM does have a product called IBM HTTP Server, which is a rebrand of Apache Webserver with some configuration tools and (iirc) a different SSL engine. However, WebSphere is a totally different product with different functionality (application server vs. web-server). They are bundled together, but are different.
WebSphere does use Xerces and Xalan which are Apache projects for XML processing. So do most of the Java application servers, though.
FYI, IBM is a major supporter of the Xerces and Xalan sub-projects, and is a major supporter of the Jakarta Apache project, providing developers and code. So maybe they have a better claim on being "more" open source than other Java Application servers. This I leave up to others to decide.
rmjiv
She came sliding down the alleyway like butter dripping off of a hot biscuit.
Here's a brief summary of what eBay are currently running....
For the middle-tier and back-end they've got a couple of Sun Starfire E10K servers (with a third on standby for hot-swap fail-over). The back-end db is Oracle, most of the other software is by Veritas. This all uses a 400 disk RAID array (also made by Sun), which is also mirrored in real-time.
They're using seven Sun Enterprise ES450s to provide the iron for searching, and the web front end is served by sixty-or-so Compaq servers.
It seems impressive! ....but it's worth noting that some of the above may be a bit out-of-date, as it's based on the info in these articles, which are quite old now:-
Article on Internet Week about eBay's steps to ensure performanceSun's page on what-they-do-for-eBay part way down the page, an article entitled: An Integrated, High Availability Cluster Solution)