RE: WAS Express/Base vs. Tomcat

I actually haven't done anything in production but I did do some testing with 
it (it was under serious consideration at one point before the last change in 
pricing with WAS Express) and I use it quite a bit developing stuff locally.

What I can tell you testing wise (this was done on a 720 with 1 gig memory) is 
that Tomcat 4.1 will run circles around WebSphere 3.5, 5.0, and 5.1 (Express 
versions of those) but the difference between WAS 5.1 Express and Tomcat 4.1 is 
much smaller from what I've observed. Also, the connector makes a huge 
difference in performance. The version IBM provides doesn't perform nearly as 
well as the one from Apache.org. Tomcat still takes a few minutes to start up 
but running CRTJVAPGM on it's jar's helps a bunch. I also haven't done a heads 
up comparison of Tomcat 4.1 under JDK 1.4 and WAS 5.1 Express but the newer JDK 
should help Tomcat some since it generally performs better than 1.3. Version 5 
of Tomcat is also supposed to be faster but I haven't messed with it at all.

I know one of the arguments against Tomcat was lack of scalability but that 
just isn't true with version 4.1. I don't know if I have the link to the 
article anymore but I know I read something about a website doing over a 
million hits per day with Tomcat and Apache HTTPD. Also, Tomcat is used as the 
base for several commercial Java app servers (including Sun's, if I'm not 
mistaken). If you want a support contract, I'd be surprised if you there isn't 
a company supporting it or you could use JBoss (which uses Tomcat for servlets 
and JSPs) and buy support from them.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: Bartell, Aaron L. (TC) [mailto:ALBartell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 1:28 PM
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: [WEB400] WAS Express/Base vs. Tomcat


That's actually what I have done in the past because I couldn't ever get
my servlets to install correctly on IBM's supplied Tomcat server.  The
reason I am wondering if IBM's Tomcat could/should be used is because I
am guessing it would fall into a support contract similar to IBM's
Apache.

I would prefer to do as you say because then all I have to do a call a
couple qshell scripts from a CL program I wrote to start and stop the
server and don't ever have to go into the web admin that seems to be
incredibly slow for the size of machine we have it on.  That may be
because of the pools setup for its specific subsystem though.

Based on your response can I assume that you use Tomcat for mission
critical applications?

Thanks for your input,
Aaron Bartell 

-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 12:15 PM
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: [WEB400] WAS Express/Base vs. Tomcat

Aaron,

You don't need to use the supplied version of Tomcat (and I wouldn't
since it's extremely old and has several security bugs). You can easily
run the generic version 4 (and probably 5 as well). You'll just need to
download it and the connector from Apache.org.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: Bartell, Aaron L. (TC) [mailto:ALBartell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 1:06 PM
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: [WEB400] WAS Express/Base vs. Tomcat



As I sit here and wait 5 more minutes for a WAS Express server to
startup (which has just three small apps installed, and I have already
been waiting 5 minutes) I am asking myself if I should instead go the
Tomcat route (which I have used before for less mission critical apps).
I guess one of the main points I would need to address would be how well
IBM supports their ASF Tomcat servers.

What are others doing out there? If our requirements do not entail
anything outside the functionality of Tomcat (no EJB's for instance)
should we just head down that path instead of incurring the bulky-ness
of the WAS Express (or WAS Base) servers?

Thanks in advance for your opinions,
Aaron Bartell

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_______________________________________________
This is the Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries (WEB400) mailing list
To post a message email: WEB400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/web400
or email: WEB400-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/web400.