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IBM to release WebSphere for Linux
According to this story, IBM will
announce next week (probably at Linux world) WebSphere Application Server for Linux. Thanks, IBM..
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I'm sure Linux + WebSphere, Oracle, etc. will smoke NT + Back Orfice in terms of performace, scalability and *reliability*.
But what would be REALLY cool would be to have WebObjects!!!
This semester at Berkeley there's been a
"systems people meet the database people on
the Internet" seminar series, with some
pretty good speakers (Michael Stonebreaker
(Illustra, Postgres, ect), Eric Brewer
(Inktomi), one of the Junglee founders, ect.
If there's a common theme so far, is that
"ACID doesn't work for scalable Internet
applications -- 99% of the time you don't
need it, but you pay in speed all the time".
Eric noted how trying to do the Inktomi search
engine using Oracle would be hopeless, the
Junglee guy noted how painful Oracle was in
their apps, ect.
Why would Websphere be any less hopeless? It
sounds as heavyweight as Oracle, maybe moreso.
Those are all components that can be added to a system and does not really define an application server environment. At the root of it, you have an application that does something and serves up a result. Apache+PHP or Apache+mod_perl do this and as such are technically application servers.
Load balancing is probably best done through something like a Cisco Local Director in front of the server which would cross over into fault tolerance when combined with something like back-to-back Netapp 740 filers. Distributed session management can be done easily with both PHP and mod_perl as well. Just a matter of deciding where to store your sessions. Most likely in a central database and have each server fetch the session state from that central db. With two-phase commits you are getting into database functionality which isn't really directly related to the application language you choose. db connection pooling is possible with mod_perl and not quite there with PHP, although you do get persistent db connections which is usually what you want anyway. Thread pooling? Well, yeah, I guess. Apache isn't threaded, so that's a little hard, but as Alex mentioned, when PHP is used with the fhttpd server you get that functionality. Template interpretation is a given, remote manageability as well. Heck, it's Unix. Result cacheing is easy to do as well in a slew of different ways including shared memory plus much much more.
Granted, this stuff isn't packaged up in a nice and shiny box and handed to you on a plate. You might have to think a little bit and decide what the best approach is, but that doesn't mean it cannot be used to do the job. There are literally hundreds of thousands of sites that think it does.
-Rasmus
Hey, no need to apologize to me. ;) This whole Application Server buzzword is rather confusing. There are so many companies pitching wildly different products and labelling them all "Application Servers" that it can get really confusing to the customer, I think.
Calling both PHP and WebSphere Application Servers and comparing them directly is not appropriate at all. WebSphere includes a whole collection of tools while PHP is just one building block that people could potentially use to roll their own Application Server environment. Heck, with a bit of fiddling I bet one could even use PHP as a WebSphere component.
yep, you forgot to plug Zope, which is pretty cool too. I'm partial to mod_perl myself. websphere sounds like a great product for really big servers, and for people who aren't into doing it all themselves by putting odd bits together.
hey.. well the more lines of code.. the better.. right?? :) heheh
It's sort of a skeleton for making mod_perl, mod_php, etc, right? Sort of a meta application server?
:-). They mostly seem like marketing buzzwords to differentiate same-old same-old products.
I too am baffled by a lot of the buzzwords coming out nowadays (and olden days too
--
Infuriate left and right
Just to clarify, I am in no way knocking WebSphere here. I actually think it is pretty cool. Different people have different needs and requirements when it comes to application servers. Sometimes you don't need all the features of a WebSphere and something like PHP fits perfectly. Heck, sometimes a simple Bourne shell CGI script is the right approach.
-Rasmus
Oh yeah, were you on the Win95 FUD team at the time? No time to learn how to spell?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
what exactly(!) is an (web) application server
A rather premature announcement?
NT / Win2k is here to stay, mainly because Unix is way too hard for the common mortal to deal with.
Hopefully, Linux will still be able to take over the server market, so that we won't have to try to develop "performing, scalable and *reliable*" apps.
Have you used the product? I'd like to hear what you think of it in terms of stability, scalability, ease of configuration/installation, etc. Please e-mail me at jason@buberel.org.
thanks,
jason
I have played with WebSphere on NT Server/IIS, but now that it comes to a Linux box, I can do some serious development work with it as well. (i.e. although we deploy on IIS we do all development on Linux)
:-)
The decision to port to a free x86 UNIX workalike is the smartest move IBM has done all week.
Wonderfull news
very?
I think i just FARTED!!!!!!!
as broad gauged support of its hardware as it seemed to be implied by an earlier article posted in /. Check out Linux Weekly News.
I suggest being a bit more circumspect in our Wonderment and Damning of each new Advance .
It all could all be much less than it seems - be certain this will be a long haul fight.
Linux community should be fairly happy about this move from IBM. This can help Linux to become a stronger contenter as the platform of the choice for developing enterprise wide web systems.
Personally nt is going down, sure its a bit off topic, but i'm looking more general /. topic :)
The more we get big companies doing the right thing, the more force there will be behind everyone else, eventually it'll be really cool. Too bad eventually isn't like tomarrow or something.
I wish they'd include PRE in the set of allowed tags, but from what I recall some dorkass discovered they could make /. be forty screens wide using obnoxious PRE tags.
Perhaps they could filter everything inside of PRE to 80 or 90 columns?
--
Program Intellivision!
Linux need no longer beg for applications. If companies sell these things for Linux, fine. But we certainly don't need to thank them for it.
Duh... is this the IBM that used to be the
called the evil empire - until it spent the
last 15 years getting repeatedly wiped all
over the floor by a geeky little college
dropout? duh... the same IBM that started
the serious alternative OS movement with
OS/2 and had *serious* support from grass-
roots users in TEAM-OS/2 - and then blew it
again... that IBM? the same IBM that foisted
MVS-JCL on the mainframe world and prevented
anything else from encroaching on its monopoly,
and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the unix world - initially by the threat
of no gov't sales if it didn't comply with
POSIX... that IBM??? I wouldn't stand too
close to them guys if I was you...
I'm really wondering which VM they will use. Blackdown's port? A port of their VM? I've used WebSphere before under NT and was extremely impressed.
That's great to have another application ported from IBM. But what I'm really waiting for is an updated MQSeries client.
Right now they only have a moldy oldy MQSeries client from way back in Oct. 1998. How about an update? How about porting the server...
;-)
Your guess is ok. PHP can be considered an application server as well.
Working for IBM should be cool...
I'd like to think that this is way beyond ZDNet. Your simplificaiton does not do justice to what a real app server is.
Load balancing, fault tolerance, auto-failover, distributed session management, two-phase commits, db connection pooling, thread pooling, template interpretation, remote manageability, result caching (at the Db and the app level), plus much, much more.
PHP3 does not even come close. It does template interpretation, and that's about it.
-jason
Cold Fusion is being ported to Linux.
Right now we run Cold Fusion on NT, and it's going pretty stable at the moment, we try not to touch that machine heheh...but we anxiously await the Linux port of Cold Fusion so we can run apache and get better scalibility. Right now the server is a PII-400 with 256M ram... I think that machine would haul a lot more ass on Linux.
I don't expect to see the port until the start of 2000 though.
Guess I'll just have to wait.
==frankly on the websphere thing, that's great, I just wasn't impressed with websphere from a distance, didn't look as 'simple' as Cold Fusion is.... CF ROCKS
Derek
(while on the topic of Web Application Servers)
I've heard bits and pieces about ColdFusion being ported to Linux. Think they'd do it? Would it be worthwhile? Anyone want it for Linux?
I appreciate the answer, but doesn't mod_perl already eliminate the need for spawning new requests by cacheing/keeping them in memory for re-usage?
A Web Application Server is a piece of middleware that sits above the HTTP (In same process or out of it - your choice) that holds application logic. It would perform the same function as a CGI with a low end WebApplication Server, but instead of spawing a new process for each user, you initialize once and pool your requests. In the Open Source world, Jserv from Java.Apache.org, modPERL and others can perform this basic function. But an Application Server can scale tremendously beyond there and in between, by spreading the load among various servers, adding a transaction monitor to perform two phase phase commits and lots of other functionality. Without getting too technical a high end Web Application Server like our WebSphere Enterprise can check to validate your credit card and simultaneously check inventory to ensure the company has the product in stock. When you get a yes to both of those answers you them "commit" the transaction.
This is a growing area as Web based applications assume more business processes that touch a company's backend systems.
IBM's WebSphere line encompases several Web Application Servers and other Web related software applications.
I hope that helps from the 50,000 foot level.
James Barry
Product Manager
IBM HTTP Servers (Apache) and WebSphere