Re: Oracle Application Server vs. other Web Server Products

SKR wrote:

> I'm working through a decision on what Web Server Product to use. I am
> leaning heavily toward Oracle's Application Server product for the kind of
> reasons noted on the Oracle site.
>
> Anyone worked through a similar decision making process and taken a
> different path (i.e., Apache, Netscape, etc.)?

Unfortunately Oracle introduced a lot of naming fuzz for their product but basically there is a considerable difference between the "Application Server" business and the "webserver" business. Webserving can be with static pages or dynamic pages generated by some external cgi-bin stuff (perl e.g.). Apache is well-known for this and very good at it. Products exist that combine these, amongst them Oracle Application Server. Another popular product is Coldfusion from Allaire. Basically the latter contains an AS with pages which contain scripting to generate html on the fly. It can launch queries against a database like Oracle. Oracle has also a "small version" of this AS which is called WebDB. In fact the latter also serves as Web-interface for the database management. And as webserver for static pages.

So if you're looking purely for static pages: forget Oracle. If you're looking for dynamic content, and you have a complex application with a lot of database interaction look deeply into the Oracle AS stuff. Besides just purely constructing dynamic web pages the OAS also permits:

- to plug in Forms which are transformed into Java Applets in a browser
- OAS is separated in sub-tools which permit load-balancing
- stuff like transaction processing & monitoring.

Succes.

</rudi> Received on Fri Oct 22 1999 - 11:29:34 CDT