Which is the best Open source application server?

Question

We are looking for a open source J2EE Application server for log budget deployments. We are considering JBoss and Glassfish. Which is the best open source application server? Any comparative study available?

Answer 1

A comparison table between JBoss, Geronimo and Tomcat for latter 2007.

This article has many interesting points to aid your decision and is worth reading:

Geronimo 2 is the clear choice if your Java application needs are particularly extensive or if you just want to leverage total Java EE 5 compliance. Although JBoss 4.2 is not completely compatible with Sun's Java EE 5 standard, the JBoss 4.2 team is responsible for many of the cutting-edge technologies used by all of the servers and added to the standard Java EE 5 capabilities. Tomcat 6 by itself is a lightweight solution. It does not come with all the JEE features and additional packages found in JBoss and Geronimo, but also doesn't require much memory and runs fast even on smaller servers.

In conclusion the author says:

Bottom line: JBoss, Geronimo, and Tomcat are reliable, fast, and definitely able to handle the traffic on large-scale enterprise applications. Furthermore, many of the high-demand Java server technologies presented in the features comparison originate from the open source world, not the commercial one.

Answer 2

I'm sure the answer depends on your specific needs. You won't go wrong with either Glassfish or Jboss. I tend to prefer Glassfish because of the nice admin console. My advice to you is that you draw you requirements and test both app servers. Most benchmarks I find on the net tend to be a little biased.

Answer 3

JBoss has been used in production environment for over 6 years now. Glassfish's codebase is over 10 years BUT most of the code is recent. Glassfish v3 (still in beta) has a microkernel (so is Jboss 5) architecture.

Glassfish has command line tools and a nice console. Since Glassfish is from sun, usually it will work well with the latest version of JDK/J2EE -- currently JDK 6/J2EE 5.

Glassfish should work well in windows, solaris and linux. Jboss(from redhat) should work just fine on linux, windows for sure.

community : a much much bigger community around Jboss. Glassfish still forming its community. Books and other 3rd party products are available for JBoss but not for Glassfish.

If something is mission critical and you need to get it up and running right now, you will NOT go wrong going with JBoss. However, if you have some time, in the long run Glassfish will NOT hurt you. Especially, if you're targeting Solaris.

Answer 4

I would consider any bells and whistles you might be interested in. JBoss has a lot of nice integration points with frameworks, such as Hibernate, but has a history of not playing well with Spring. Both very useful frameworks, both code change your decision on how you might proceed.

Answer 5

After using JBoss from the very beginning and then switching to Glassfish in the last 6 months, I can honestly say that Glassfish is fast, reliable and full-featured. I would never consider going back. Im not talking "PetStore" here, my experience with these servers is in the high-transaction online stock-trading arena.

Answer 6

I've had great experiences with JBoss 4.x, but unfortunately they seem to have gone off the tracks with their Java EE 5 implementation effort. The fact that JBoss 5 is so late getting to market is extremely disappointing.

The most impressive to me right now is Glassfish. It has a great pace of development, and appears poised to dominate once JEE6 hits the wire.

Answer 7

Websphere CE is also worth looking at, but over all my vote would be for glassfish. The v3 version is looking very promising.

Karl