BEA was one of two vendors to send us the version of its product that was shipping at the time this article was written. While we found WebLogic Integration 7.0 able to meet all our needs and then some, in testing we determined that there are just too many pieces of WebLogic to keep track of, and a centralized user interface is an essential step for BEA.
The product BEA shipped us was much more far-reaching than simply EAI with BPM. It included a portal, B2B integration tools and several smaller products. We installed and evaluated only the EAI and BPM portions of the system.
Installation was relatively simple; we didn't encounter any major problems. But configuration left us frustrated with the JDBC choices offered. WebLogic's documentation talks about the Microsoft
JDBC driver for SQL Server and the BEA-supplied JDBC driver for SQL Server. The two take different parameters and have different levels of JDBC compliance, causing a bit more delay in getting things running compared with our experience using other products. With WebLogic, as with the competition, this is a one-time expense: Once you figure out the connection strings and class names, you can copy them from existing projects.
Even so, configuring JDBC was just a little more frustrating with WebLogic than with other products; and as part of its reliability, there is an extra step (connection pooling) required when configuring databases in WebLogic that is not needed for most of the products we tested.
Because BEA shipped us its whole integration toolkit enchilada, the management console was cluttered. We couldn't find a simple way to say "Show us only what we want" within our time constraints. BEA says a subsequent version of the product offers a redesigned, separate management console.
For functionality, WebLogic has it all. While the version under test lacked a complete implementation of Web services support, BEA says it will remedy this in version 8.1, which should be available by the time you read this.
BEA WebLogic Integration 7.0, $62,000 per CPU; $288,000 as tested. BEA Systems, (800) 817-4BEA, (408) 570-8000. www.bea.com
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BEA was one of two vendors to send us the version of its product that was shipping at the time this article was written. While we found WebLogic Integration 7.0 able to meet all our needs and then some, in testing we determined that there are just too many pieces of WebLogic to keep track of, and a centralized user interface is an essential step for BEA.
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