Application Servers Technology Strategy Position Paper

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Application Servers
Background
Application Server Standard
Technology Drivers for Selection of Application Server

Application Servers

Technology Strategy Position Paper

Goal

In an effort to stem the diversification of application server technologies and product implementations at Stanford University, this paper will give some guidelines for their current and future use by ITSS.

Background

Application Servers are a class of server platforms that allow remotely initiated invocation of program or application execution. They are also called Web Application Servers depending upon their implementation.
Some examples of Application Server technologies are:

J2EE servers^ⁱ
CORBA servers^ⁱⁱ
Microsoft DCOM servers^ⁱⁱⁱ

Of these technologies, only Java J2EE technology servers are being considered for this document due to the fact that only this framework is broadly deployed at Stanford University. Also, J2EE is the most likely to remain open in terms of interface definitions for the foreseeable future. Supplemental guidelines will be created for other technologies as needed. Currently, the following J2EE compliant application servers are being used at Stanford University (just within ITSS):

Product	Manufacturer
OAS^{^iv}	Oracle
JRun^{^v}	Macromedia
Tomcat^{^vi}	Apache.org
JBoss^{^vii}	JBoss.org
WebLogic^{^viii}	BEA

This proliferation of product deployments is complex, expensive and largely unnecessary. It is consistent with the strategic principles of ITSS to reduce the number of these platforms to the fewest possible and implement them in the most cost-effective and robust manner.

Application Server Standard

If J2EE programming and protocol standards are supported by all the above products, then the fundamental basis for choosing one product over may seem somewhat arbitrary. However, there are some differentiating characteristics between these products. There are both technology and non-technology differentiators which drive selection.
Some products have been implemented simply because of ERP product implementation (vendor choice). Some were simply the favorite of a developer involved on a project. Others were selected because they were available as opensource software (OSS) or otherwise use a free license from a manufacturer. None of these motivations should constitute the basis for a standard for application server strategy.

Technology Drivers for Selection of Application Server

The following are the high-level characteristics that should be part of the standard product selection criteria for application servers.

Open standards (adherence to and at pace with)
Ease of deployment and management
Scalability
Fault tolerance
Remote monitoring
Platform support
Security
Performance

On the basis of the above criteria, not all J2EE compliant application servers are equally appropriate for enterprise service deployment at Stanford University. For example, to achieve the scalability and fault tolerance of application servers, product specific capabilities are generally used. This is because there is no standard execution state management protocol within J2EE. Each vendor product that does scalability and fault-tolerance (clustering), does so differently. Some do not have these capabilities at all but could be adapted/extended to perform in this way.

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