RE: Webfacing on Tomcat

>So, what are your first impressions?  Is
>performance any better?

Yes.  First touch went from close to 2 minutes to about one.  Subsequent
touches are about 15 seconds.  This is on a completely dedicated machine.
I'll beat on it Monday when there's more of a workload.

>What do you think of the user interface?

Seems the same as WAS... No anomalies so far!

>Are you happy with how it works?

So far, so good.

Speaking to the Tomcat configuration, I'd say that it is easier to get
running than WAS was.  The error messages are about as cryptic, but they're
all pretty much in one place.  The admin can be done from a green screen by
editing several XML files (which is a plus in my book because that means
that I can script it.)  Startup/shutdown of the associated Apache server is
easy to do from green screen as well.  So thinking about distributing a web
based app to many customer sites, I feel a bit more comfortable with Apache
and Tomcat.

As a green screen guy moving to the web, I'd say that there's some learning
curve involved trying to decode things like a 404 error - no web server I
know gives very good diagnostic messages.  I'm used to going into the job
log and saying 'Ah ha!'  So far, there hasn't been any 'Ah ha!' for me in
the web world.

I'm going to try to write myself out of a web admin job by documenting the
major tasks and foisting... I mean cross training someone else to be able to
do this stuff.

All in all I would say that it's been worth the trip, but I'm not convinced
that any browser based app is as robust as 5250 or thick client.  The
communications link is oddly fragile because there isn't really a connexion
between the web server and the browser.  It's more like they throw packets
at each other without checking to see if the other one needs those packets
or not.

  --buck