Weblogic or JBoss? [closed]

Answer 1

JBoss (Red Hat) has yet to release a commercially supported 100% Java EE 5-compliant container*. There is a beta of JBoss 5 out. Hopefully they won't be 3 years behind for Java EE 6. JBoss is more concerned with their microcontainer than Java EE x because that's what they say their customers are more interested in. I have never met any of those customers. But it does mean that Java EE is a second-class citizen in their world. As proof, their containers don't even ship in compliant mode; you have to tweak some config files to make it spec-compliant.

If Sun wasn't about to be consumed by the blackhole that is Oracle, I would recommend Glassfish.

• Red Hat does have a commercially supported 90% Java EE 5-compliant container. JBoss 4.3 is their "stepping stone" to Java EE 5 version.

Answer 2

IBM released their BETA version of Java EE 6 server. So in case of Java EE 6 I think IBM would be the leader. Also JBoss is a good server but under heavy loads my experience shows it's not fully reliable compared to WebLogic and WebSphere.

Answer 3

I suspect the reason Weblogic gets chosen is a pleasant sales person comes to visit a manager with money to spend, gives him the sales pitch and hey-presto, the company is using Weblogic. I don't know if the JBoss support contract comes with a sales force, but would be surprised if it did and that the playing field has leveled in that respect.

In my experience, other than the pretty console you get with Weblogic (which isn't worth forking out the license fees for) there's not much between the 2. I suspect these days JBoss has market share (just guessing that), which in my book that translates into more help available online, etc when you're stuck on something.

It's also worth considering that the Weblogic licenses (last time I saw them) where the usual server-side terms - per-processor, per-box, etc. This will limit you in scalability terms because with JBoss you can keep adding hardware without occurring extra cost, while with Weblogic your licenses will need upgrading too.

Whichever you choose you're going to be able to build your system on top of them without too much trouble, but my preference would be JBoss.

Answer 4

I really like WebLogic. I'll suspend the licensing cost for the moment and just say that in their heyday they were the best Java EE app server on the market, hands down. BEA had a lot of extremely talented people developing their code, and it showed. If money was not part of the equation, and I had an employer that insisted on spending money that wasn't mine, I'd still choose WebLogic over WebSphere or JBOSS or Glassfish or anything else on the market.

I'm saddened by Oracle's purchase. I think that the talent has leaked away, and Oracle has no clear idea of what they want to do with WebLogic. They've been stuck on version 10.1 for a few years now.

    <prejudice-ahead>
Glassfish sounds like it's a much better effort from Sun, but their history says they write great standards and lousy implementations.  I don't consider Glassfish to be a viable alternative.
    </prejudice-ahead>

WebSphere is a typical IBM project: twice the cost, half the functionality, poor documentation, and you have to buy all their nonsense (e.g., Eclipse based IDEs) to use it.

JBOSS isn't bad, but only because the price difference is so strongly in its favor.

I'd rather recommend Spring, Tomcat and ActiveMQ as an excellent alternative. If EJBs are absolutely required, add OpenEJB to that mix.

2018 update: My affection for Java EE as a standard and its app server implementations has cooled in the last nine years. I think a better answer is to go with Spring Boot. Deploy an executable JAR on a JVM and never worry about a Java EE app server again.

Answer 5

I'm saddened by Oracle's purchase. I think that the talent has leaked away, and Oracle has no clear idea of what they want to do with WebLogic. They've been stuck on version 10.1 for a few years now.

There are a couple of problems with the above comment. First, Oracle only purchased BEA 1.5 years ago, and even then that wasn't a DOJ approved transaction. The final sale was not approved until something like 12 months ago.

Secondly, Oracle has made three releases of WebLogic since acquisition. They are now on version 10.3.1 (or "11g").

Lastly, I think Oracle is - surprised to say that I am - moving in a clear direction. With the recent acquisition of Sun, Oracle is now the primary provider of Java technology and has what many consider to be the leading Java application server. They would not have invested in these companies and technologies without a clear plan to dominate the market. I think Oracle's recent movements in the Java EE 6, WebLogic, and JDeveloper spaces show that they are pushing extremely hard to become the Java leader.

I'd still prefer JBoss; it's simple and just works. I'm having loads of problems converting a Seam 2.x app from JBoss to Weblogic, but I'm hopeful that I will be successful at some point.

Answer 6

I had worked on jboss for a year and on weblogic for more than a year now, my experience with the web logic is good compared to jboss as weblogic is more stable and robust, it can handle more than 3000 concurrent requests without throwing a single exception where jboss failed to do so and admin console for the weblogic is excellent, but I think weblogic is more complex then jboss. As far as client is investing money on application server, my choice will be weblogic for sure.