IBM WebSphere SDK for Web Services

VanMan writes "IBM is offering a free download of their WebSphere SDK for Web Services. It's based on open specifications for Web services such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI and runs on both Linux and Windows operating systems. The IBM WebSphere SDK for Web Services includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation, so it merits a look-see."

What are it's competetors?

[aaron_pet]

What are IBMs web sphere's competetors?

Re:What are it's competetors?

[LinuxHam]

I'm assuming you're asking who are IBM's competitors for this product.

Websphere started out life as a Java servlet engine. Therefore, it was basically an outgrowth of Apache JServ and subsequently Jakarta. So much so, that IBM even included the Apache HTTP server and threw a management GUI on it. Other than the Apache line, BEA's WebLogic line is the only real competitor to IBM.

Re:What are it's competetors?

[aminorex]

JBoss is the most relevant competitor.

Re:What are it's competetors?

[smaug195]

I would not consider JBoss much of a competitor though. People already mentioned BEA(my personal favorite) Oracle also makes a web application server.

Comparisons between alternatives.

[aaron_pet]

Does anybody know of a web site that compares these?

(I'm basically trying to move the conversation away from the 1st post mess that was)

Re:Comparisons between alternatives.

[LinuxHam]

Ya gotta at least TRY around here!

Google [google.com] for it.

Re:What are it's competetors?

[wagley]

Actually Sun (i-planet) and Iona have web app servers that compete with BEA/IBM. Marketshare for the non-free stuff looks basically like BEA Systems 34% IBM 31% Sun One 9% IONA 3% Fujitsu-Siemens 1% Sybase 1% Progress/Sonic 1% SAP 0% Other Vendors 19% Functionality across the app servers is basically the same. BEA used to be a lot better, but IBM has caught up. IBM is a lot cheaper too.

Re:What are it's competetors?

[digidave]

As no one else has mentioned, Oracle9i is also an app server and is in competition with Websphere.

Anyway, I work with Websphere 3.5 at work (4.0 is available) and can tell you that it's much more than Jakarta Tomcat.

the reason Websphere comes with Apache (well, it comes with a variant called IBM HTTP Server) is because it's not a HTTP server and it needs one to operate. Websphere handles only the jsp/java requests. Its advantage over something like Tomcat is that it's particularly well-suited to the enterprise market and supports massive scalability, intelligent load balancing (servers can talk to each other to find out what's going on) and a wide-array of add-ons (Websphere Portal Server, Websphere Translation Server, etc).

Just to throw in my own opinion, I hate Websphere. I have to run it on NT 4 and it crashes a LOT under heavy load. NT stays up as does Apache, but Websphere itself is constantly down when supporting about 70,000 unique visitors a day on two servers. I am told, however, that Websphere is extremely stable, although those same people can't seem to make MY servers stable for some reason.

Try Lotus Domino

[rbenech]

Yea yea... websphere is cool and all, but you gotta try the latest preview release of Domino from notes.net [lotus.com] (i mean lotus developer domain #-> whatever...