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F E A T U R E

Web Application Servers Come of Age

July 23, 2001
By Gautam Desai, Eric Sanchez and Joe Fenner

Persistence Software PowerTier 6.0

Persistence's PowerTier 6.0 is a standards-based development and deployment platform designed primarily for use in the financial services market and by ISPs and ASPs (application service providers). PowerTier's strengths lie in performance and object mapping, but it suffers from development, deployment and management limitations.

Persistence PowerTier's ObjectBuilder
(screen view)

Click here to enlarge

For high performance, PowerTier offers an advanced distributed object caching architecture that should appeal to high-volume transaction-oriented sites. The product uses random and weighted-random methods for server load-balancing, though it does not perform load-balancing between applications and components. PowerTier provides strong application and session fault tolerance and management features. Sessions are managed across multiple servers or databases. A third-party message queue (SilverStream's jBroker) and a JMS interface are embedded in the product.

PowerTier has advanced object-relation mapping features, including an object persistence layer. The product supports popular development environments and provides an adapter for Rational Software Corp.'s Rational Rose modeling tool.

PowerTier is administered via its own Web-based console (which we found to be limited) or through use of a third-party console, such as management utilities from Tivoli. The product lacks deployment features and advanced debugging capabilities, such as distributed debugging.

PowerTier 6.0, $25,000 per CPU for deployment, $7,500 per developer's license (20 percent of license cost is for maintenance and support). Persistence Software, (650) 372-3600. www.persistence.com

Macromedia Jrun 3.0

JRun is Macromedia's J2EE application server and development environment. JRun is a complete J2EE platform for rapid development and deployment of reliable, scalable and secure server-side Java applications. The product is available in developer, professional, enterprise and studio editions.

JRun provides a logical environment to run enterprise-level applications using Java-based development technology. It is ideally suited for organizations that want to continue to rapidly develop applications in Macromedia's midsize-enterprise-focused ColdFusion product but also want enterprise-level scaling using a Java-based application server.

Macromedia's JRun 3.0 (screen view)

Click here to enlarge

For performance, JRun provides results and configurable object caching, as well as configurable connection and thread pooling. Load-balancing is achieved through Macromedia's ClusterCats clustering technology.

Sessions are managed with cookies or stored in memory or a database. The product embeds its own transaction-processing and message-queuing software but does not provide enterprise application integration functionality.

JRun includes a proprietary browser-based administration console, but it does not support SNMP or offer any integration with third-party management consoles. For development, the product's JRun Developer simplifies building front-end interfaces in HTML, WML (Wireless Markup Language), JSP and ASP (Active Server Page). Developers can script objects together using JavaScript. JRun can create installation packaging and enables one-step installation with authorization, but it lacks rollback capabilities.

JRun 3.0, free, developer; $795 per CPU, professional; $4,995 per CPU, enterprise; $495 per seat, JRun Studio. Macromedia (Allaire), (617) 219-2000. www.allaire.com