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Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2003 13:25:11 +0100
Subject: Re: Which EJB container? Which Web container?
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Cc: 'Christian Trutz' <chris@smilebase.org>,
 geronimo-dev@incubator.apache.org
To: Alan Cabrera <adc@toolazydogs.com>
From: Alex Blewitt <Alex.Blewitt@ioshq.com>
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>> I think it should be possible to have many different
>> implementations of the EJB container and the user(admin)
>> should then decide which one he is using ...

Whilst I think it's a good idea not to be tied down to one specific 
system for eternity, I think that Sun's J2EE spec fairly badly split 
the EJB and Web containers.

As a result of which, pretty much every J2EE server thinks of the EJB 
container and J2EE container as being distinct. For example, IBM used 
to advise running Web containers on one node and EJB containers on 
another node.

I'm a strong believer that the distinction /shouldn't/ be split because 
of the terminology, but rather the EJB and Web should be in the /same/ 
VM process. It will drastically increase the performance of the 
inter-Web/EJB communication since you won't have to use RMI as an 
intermediary.

So, whichever the solutions are, they should be integrated in such a 
way that when you run a J2EE application, it runs in a single VM which 
provides both EJB and Web services. We should therefore use whichever 
containers support co-existence in the same VM, and not go for 
implementations which require being implemented in different VMs.

I also think that whilst some choice is good, too much can be 
detrimental. What I'd like out of an EJB server is one that 'Just 
Works' and I wouldn't be particularly bothered whether it used 
Tomcat/Jetty or OpenEJB/OJB. Nor would I (as an admin) bother about 
changing it.

IMHO it would be better to create a system that works well and quickly 
with one set of components (and here, other Apache projects certainly 
lend themselves) and not place as much importance whether parts of it 
can be changed.

Alex