RE: Support for Tomcat

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I just got off the phone with John Quarantello of IBM eServer Solutions
Marketing.  John is especially knowledgeable in the iSeries segment of that
particular business unit.

John has assured me that as long as IBM distributes the Tomcat server as
part of OS/400, that it will be supported like any other product.  That
being said, there is a bit of a difference between the powered by Apache
server, which is pretty highly tuned to run with the iSeries, and Tomcat,
which is basically a pure Java plug-in that really isn't customized.  In my
opinion support for Tomcat, especially the newer features, is likely to be
just as good if not better from the open source community, such as at
Apache.org.  IBM will make sure that the powered by Apache server works
seamlessly with the Tomcat plug-in, but they are unlikely to try to keep up
with the current versions, such as 4.0.

There will be some announcements regarding the iSeries web application
development in May and again in July, so until then I think you'll need to
be a little flexible in your deployment plans.  The best advice I can give
is to keep working with WebSphere, especially the standard edition, for
mission critical applications and view Tomcat as a low-cost, small-footprint
solution for less critical applications.

Joe