Web middleware products are becoming more powerful and sophisticated. What were basic Web-page-development tools or specialized database connectivity products have become full-fledged Web-application servers in their own right. The products considered in this category have the ability to quickly and easily take back-end data and present it over a Web browser, without a complex learning curve.

Allaire's ColdFusion started life as a Web-site-development tool, and that lineage clearly shows. It has an excellent IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for Web site development, and uses a page-based model, with a set of more than 70 ASP-like tags, called CFML. It allows quick and easy native connectivity to Oracle and Sybase (with DB2 and Informix connectivity on the way), and ODBC support for other data sources. ColdFusion also supports a wide variety of other standards, including XML, OLE-DB, COM and CORBA. At its price, its functionality and ease-of-use is hard to beat.

--Richard Hoffman

Java Development Environment

Winner

VisualCafé Database Development Edition 3.0, Symantec Corp., (888) 822-3409 www.visualcafe.com

Finalists

IBM Visual Age for Java 2.0 Enterprise Edition, IBM Corp., (800) 426-4968 www.software.ibm.com Microsoft Visual J++ 6.0, Microsoft Corp., (425) 882-8080 www.microsoft.com

Award: Java Development Environment

As Java is still maturing, both the technology and the development environments geared for that technology are far from perfect. However, Symantec Corp.'s Visual Café 3.0 Database Development Edition edges out the rest for our award. This environment has the edge because of its ease of use; a simple applet can be created in few minutes. Furthermore, it supports the latest Java technology, including servlets, beans, swing, and the latest JDK. Visual Café has extra support for the native DLLs and EXEs of the Windows platform, and extensive support for database development, such as the dbAnywhere middleware server and databound projects.

Closely behind Visual Café is IBM Corp.'s Visual Age for Java, a well-rounded product that tries to do everything for everybody and thus has a steep learning curve. Microsoft's Visual J++ is tightly tied to the Windows development environment, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage: If you are so keen on using Windows-specific technology, a more mature environment such as Visual C++ or Visual Basic may be a better option.

--Ahmad Abualsamid

Middleware Technology

Winner

COM/DCOM, Microsoft Corp., (800) 426-9400, (425) 882-8080 www.microsoft.com

Finalists

CORBA 2.0, Object Management Group, (508) 820-4300 www.omg.org Enterprise Java Beans 1.0, Sun Microsystems, (888) 843-5282, (512) 434-1591 www.java.sun.com/products/ejb/index.html

Award: Middleware Technology

New Internet-enabled middleware technologies come and go with amazing rapidity, and this year's Ferrari may be next year's Yugo. But a handful of products and technologies will have a lasting impact on the enterprise computing landscape. These technologies already have significant momentum, and you will likely have to make decisions about them, if you haven't already.

Microsoft Corp.'s family of middleware products wins not because it's the most technically elegant solution or because any of the individual pieces are "best of breed." It wins because it is available, it has an enormous potential installed base, it works and it's free (as long as you're using NT). Yes, it locks you into NT, which is Microsoft's goal. But the development tool set is mature and easy to use; the technology is generally robust enough for most use, and everything is well-integrated with the OS. Microsoft Transaction Server 2.0 (MTS) is a good transaction server and object repository; Microsoft Message Queue 1.0 provides asynchronous messaging services, Internet Information Server (IIS) has achieved widespread use as a Web server on NT hosts, and all these products work well together within the framework of the COM/DCOM object model.

--Richard Hoffman

Web Application Server

Winner

Apple WebObjects 4.0, Apple Computer, (800) 879-6398 www.apple.com/webobjects

Finalists

Sapphire/Web 6.0, Bluestone Software, (888) BLUESTONE, (609) 727-4600 www.bluestone.com SilverStream Application Server 2.0, SilverStream Software,(800) 888-823-9700, (781) 238-5400 www.silverstream.com

Award: Web Application Server

To be seriously considered for the Web-application server category, products had to have a proven pedigree and solid enterprise-class services, such as load-balancing, failover, proven multiserver scalability, integrated IDE, deployment tools, and strong connectivity to back-end data sources, including databases, ERP products, and TP systems.

The winner, Apple's WebObjects, was one of the first products to enter this space, and has seen seven major releases. WebObjects has the best top-to-bottom object-oriented architecture and development environment of any comparable product on the market. The learning curve is fairly difficult, but the product's overall usefulness is unsurpassed.

The other two products nominated for this category, Bluestone's Sapphire/Web and SilverStream's Application Server, are both solid, enterprise-level products, and clearly industry leaders. SilverStream's product includes a CORBA-compliant ORB (Object Request Broker), and supports both EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans) and DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model, in the NT version). It has a strong IDE (integrated development environment) and an excellent server-side object-oriented programming model. Sapphire/Web has excellent connectivity and cross-platform support, strong support for XML, and outstanding security and access-control features.

--Richard Hoffman