IBM WebSphere vs Oracle Fusion

Question

I have been asked to research the advantages/disadvantages the two application servers, but am new to the space and am having a terrible time finding an unbiased comparison of the two platforms.

I understand that this is a broad question and I hate that I can't give a very specific use case (other than it will be an implementation in an organization with out a full time admin dedicated to management and it will be running in a mixed environment against JD Edwards/Oracle and SQLServer).

Does anyone know of any (recently published) content that does a reasonable comparison or can any offer any insight into which might be the better choice and why. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Hal

Answer 1

[disclaimer, I'm from IBM, so I certainly can't be objective.]

I don't envy your position. Not only is the space complex but vendors continues to extend and refine their platforms. Arms-race purchasing needs to be avoided (today vendor A has feature X, so buy A ... wait vendor B has now got X and Y, buy B!). To some extent you are taking a view about the long-term relationship you'll have with the vendor, and the confidence you have in their future.

The Gartner magic quadrant reports might be a starting point. I fear that all they will really tell you is that both vendors have some good stuff.

In your position I'd really want to get some very specific use-cases and verify that you can actually implement them. I would also look at the pricing models for your particular platforms, that may be as important as the technical differentiators.

Answer 2

I am also looking for the same answer but it seems need to create of my own. Try to post the answer back on this forum once it is ready.

Answer 3

I actually found myself sidetracked on other things, but here is a brain dump of some (poorly formed) notes from my Evernote file:

ed Stack Blue Stack

Red Stack - Fusion Middleware Blue Stack - WebSphere Middleware

Blue: J2EE Blue: ncluding JAX-WS, SOAP 1.2, MTOM, XOP, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation, WS-Policy, and Kerberos Token Profile, simplifies interoperability in mixed environments (All protocols for accesing web services) Blue: Spring Certification - SpringSource.org - the leading platform to build and run enterprise Java applications. Led and sustained by SpringSource, Spring delivers significant benefits for many projects, increasing development productivity and runtime performance while improving test coverage and application quality.

Red: JD Edwards - Enerprise One Red: WebLogic Suite Red: Web Center Suite - manager Red: SOA Suite Red: Oracle Identity Management Red: Jdeveloper dev environment Red: BI Publisher (formerly XML Publisher)

Definitions:

JavaEE - J2EE: Java Platform Enterprise Edition Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is a widely used platform for server programming in the Java programming language. The Java platform (Enterprise Edition) differs from the Java Standard Edition Platform (Java SE) in that it adds libraries which provide functionality to deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, multi-tier Java software, based largely on modular components running on an application server.

WebLogic Portal: Oracle WebLogic Portal, formerly BEA WebLogic Portal, is the best-of-breed portal framework for creating highly interactive composite applications in a SOA environment with a powerful, integrated set of design-time tools for Java developers and strong support for standards. Oracle WebLogic Portal's framework provides reliable, performant, and personalized application delivery that engages customers, keeps infrastructure costs down, delivers solutions rapidly, and standardizes application architecture.

WebLogic Application Server: WebLogic HTTP Server:

Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle WebLogic Server forms part of Oracle Fusion Middleware portfolio and supports Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL Enterprise and other JDBC-compliant databases. Oracle WebLogic Platform also includes: Portal which includes Commerce Server and Personalization Server WebLogic Integration WebLogic Workshop, an Eclipse IDE for Java, SOA and Rich Internet applications JRockit, a custom JVM. WebLogic Server includes .NET interoperability and supports the following native integration capabilities:

Native enterprise-grade JMS messaging Java EE Connector Architecture WebLogic/Tuxedo Connector COM+ Connectivity CORBA connectivity IBM... WebSphere MQ... connectivity... Oracle WebLogic Server Process Edition also includes Business Process Management and Data Mapping functionality. WebLogic supports security policies managed by security administrators. The Oracle WebLogic Server Security Model includes:

application business logic separated from security code complete scope of security coverage for all JavaEE and non-JavaEE components Oracle BI Publisher: Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (BI Publisher, formerly XML Publisher) is an enterprise reporting solution to author, manage, and deliver all types of highly formatted documents eliminating the need for costly point solutions. Built on open standards, IT staff and developers can create data models against practically any data source and use BI Publisher APIs to build custom applications leveraging existing data sources and infrastructure. End users can easily design report layouts using familiar desktop tools, dramatically reducing the time and cost needed to develop and maintain reports. Extremely efficient and highly scalable, BI Publisher can generate tens of thousands of documents per hour with minimal impact to transactional systems. Reports can be viewed online or scheduled for delivery to a wide range of destinations.