Web/Application Server -- MIDRANGE-L

I'm in a quandry and I'd like some opinions.

I'm looking at starting up a new venture which will support a web site
which has a potentially huge number of visitors and a significant number
of queries against a very large database.  Since I'm a /400 person, I
naturally gravitate toward the 400, particularly in light of the recent
e-business enhancements.

In this application, we're not anticipating any applets since these are
blocked by too many sites.  We'll just be delivering HTML pages,
possibly containing JavaScript.  I'd like to have the option to use JSP
to create the pages, if I decide to go that down the road.

However, it seems to me that as far as web serving and application
serving (ie WebSphere), that the 400 is just not keeping up with the
pace.  The WebSphere releases on the 400 always seem to be a few
releases behind.  For example, WebSphere on the 400 only offers Standard
Edition 1.1.  On AIX or NT, I have three editions to choose from: 
Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise, all at v2.02.  I expect the majority
of the actual code to be in the form of java servlets and/or EJBs.  I'd
like to have the latest features available.

I'm anticipating a lot of traffic but I don't have something like the
WebSphere Performance Pack available on the 400 to handle load balancing
and serious management reporting.  This would require some other
platform.

In addition, WebSphere on the other platforms supports a wide variety of
HTTP servers whereas I have only the one (or maybe a few) choices on the
400.  I don't like being dependent on a single vendor for an HTTP server
like I basically am on the 400.

>From perusing the newsgroups, it seems to me that WebSphere on the 400
is definitely not as popular as it is on the other platforms.  To me,
less popularity equals less support.  It means that I don't have as many
allies when I have a problem and there isn't as big an incentive on
IBM's part to fix the problem.

Now, I can't imagine running a serious business while relying on NT or
Windows 2000, whenever it appears.  I just don't think I could afford
all of the rebooting time and limited debugging and troubleshooting
facilities.  Not to mention the dearth of Microsoft support.

That leaves AIX or some other UNIX flavor.  However, if I want to have a
high powered database, I guess I'd been looking to Oracle, DB2 UDB, or
one of the competitors.  Or, I could use the AIX box(es) for HTTP and
application serving and use the 400 as a database machine.

So, my bottom line questions are:
(a) does anyone see the 400 coming up to a point where it offers
facilities at least comparable to the AIX / NT world and possibly
surpassing them, 
(b) is there some advantage to using AS/400s in a mixed RS/6000 - AS/400
shop with AS/400 doing the database serving or am I better off just
getting DB2 on an RS/6000 box?  I don't like the thought of maintaining
two operating systems unless there's a clear benefit.

Thanks,
-- 
Gary L Peskin
The Firstech Corporation
+1.323.658.1146
http://www.simdate.com
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