Product Review: OWAS 3.1 -- ain't production grade yet

In the past few weeks I have looked at and developed prototypes against OWAS 3.1 and Netscape Enterprise Server v.3 (both on NT platform) -- btw, I pull the trial versions of those software packages off the respective vendors' websites.

IMO, OWAS is a beta software, lacking in the areas of stability, tools, documentation, support, etc. The only thing OWAS is good at is ease of Oracle DB access -- however, poor stability and lack of diagostic tools/documentation leaves even that area much to be desired. NS/ES v.3, on the otherhand, is very stable and has very good web-based admin interface, which makes wed admin and development pretty easy.

So personally I won't bother with OWAS 3 for supporting any serious web-based system. I'll wait until OWAS 4 to come out to review my decision. For now, I'm sticking with NS/ES v.3 for the intranet system I'm developing.

I've also taken a brief look at WebLogics's Tengah server (trial version). Never really go it to work due to poor documentation on setup. Thought about looking at NetDynamics but it looked more complicated and closed for my need.

Anyway, this concludes an unsolicited review of some of the web servers....

Pei Ku
Independent Consultant/Oracle DBA Received on Mon Aug 10 1998 - 21:19:02 CDT