InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
November 1, 1999
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Java Servers Offer More
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TSI Software's Novera knows Java like no other product we've seen. Novera's Enterprise JavaBeans support, directory integration, management, and database connection pooling give it an elegance matched only by Java itself.
Novera has the most complete support for Enterprise JavaBeans 1.1, and it handles session beans and entity beans with container-managed persistence. Integration modules are available for use in conjunction with Allaire's Cold Fusion, IBM's WebSphere and MQSeries for messaging, and Netscape's Application Server. Simple Network Management Protocol support is also available.
The Java graphical user interface console, with its nice use of the Java Swing interface, felt poky compared with native Windows applications, but was still usable on our 400-MHz Pentium II. The sluggishness is most likely the result of Novera pulling all its configuration information out of the onboard Lightweight Directory Access Protocol server.
We used the included University of Michigan LDAP server for directory services, though Novera has native support for LDAP servers from IBM, Netscape, and Sun (on Solaris), and provides sufficient documentation for inclusion in your own LDAP server.
Novera's Management Console uses the directory effectively. It allows control over the servers across multiple servers and domains. Its granularity could be improved in places, but it's still ahead of the competition. One weakness: If you stop a server from the console, you will be disconnected and must restart it manually on the server's host machine--inconvenient if you're using the management console remotely. The console can handle configuration management, event reporting, and performance monitoring, and it can be integrated with management platforms from OpenVision, Tivoli, and others via the SNMP module to manage Web apps. Access control can be managed in a granular fashion per container and object. A deployment wizard is available to automate deployment of objects to multiple servers.
Novera's Component Designer is remarkably intuitive to use and can put a lightweight Java wrapper around almost anything. Novera allowed us to take a Jar (Java archive) file and automatically deploy it to any other running server, letting us distribute application revisions with little thought given to installation procedures or dependencies. This is very difficult, if not impossible, in environments that require native operating-system executables. But the ability to use the Java Virtual Machine's classloader on a remote server to load Jar files from a central repository would be even better.
Server-side load balancing is flexible and capable, with first-available, random, and least-used algorithms at your service out of the box, along with exposed load-balancing interfaces to let you come up with your own algorithms for special needs. Novera supports object bind-time load balancing. There is no native capacity for transaction rollback, unless you use a third-party transaction processor.
Even though Novera functions well as a complete Java application server, TSI says one of Novera's core strengths is the integration capabilities it offers between back-end data sources and other app servers. Novera supports integration with Allaire's Cold Fusion, IBM's WebSphere Netscape Application Server, and SilverStream Software's SilverStream. TSI says it intends to keep integrating Novera with other application servers and possibly to produce E-commerce components. If TSI can avoid diluting the best-of-breed status of its application server, it may be able to deploy Novera into a variety of E-commerce applications.
Novera's biggest weakness is its lack of direct support for standard Java servlets. TSI says the Web server should handle the servlets. That may be partially true, but there's plenty of room for an enterprise Java application server to enhance servlet deployment via session management, load balancing, and failover. Novera handles servlets to an extent, but only if you implement them by extending Novera's epic.servlets.EpicServlet class instead of the standard Java servlet class. Interestingly, though we did not test this feature, Novera can handle standard servlets if it is used in conjunction with IBM WebSphere, through the WebSphere integration package. Aside from that flaw, Novera, priced starting at $30,000, proved to be an exemplary Java application server.
Novera was recently acquired by TSI Software, maker of the enterprise application integration product Mercator. Although TSI says Novera will remain a separate product, integration with Mercator should improve its EAI capabilities.
BEA Systems WebLogic Server 4.0
BEA Systems' WebLogic has a strong Java flavor, but you'll find yourself doing most of the grinding. A few hours with WebLogic's graphical user interface monitor made it clear that managing the server is like Sunday car shopping--no matter how hard you press your nose to the glass, you can't get in and drive.
Configuring and managing WebLogic must be done almost entirely by editing Java properties files. These files are text based and allow a great deal of control, but even minor changes, such as modifying an access-control list, require config file editing--which means the server must be stopped and restarted.
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