Hi all.
I'm currently starting a new app development. The app architect insists we use JBoss5 because its "better". Do anyone has a wider definition of "better" (if its the case)?
I have experience using Tomcat5 and 6 in large scale applications with big user loads and it handles pretty well (IMHO). Both would be running over a RedHat6 in identical hardware conditions (in case the implementation matters).
Thanks in advance
I'm currently starting a new app development. The app architect insists we use JBoss5 because it's "better". Do anyone has a wider definition of "better" (if its the case)?
Funny, because JBOSS uses Tomcat as its servlet/JSP engine.
Sounds like "better" means "supports EJBs and JMS", because Tomcat out of the box has neither.
But that's not an issue if your application doesn't use EJBs or JMS.
And if you do need them, you can add them to Tomcat with OpenEJB and RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ.
I'd ask your app arch when the last time they wrote something besides Power Point slides or UML documents. The response might surprise you.
As @duffymo points out, JBoss uses Tomcat for its web container so better makes not much sense if we compare equivalent things (i.e. Tomcat and the web container part of JBoss). And if you are not going to use JTA, EJBs, JMS, JMX, etc, there is no real advantage at using JBoss, especially during development (Tomcat is lighter and starts faster, this is often appreciated by development teams).
There are some cases where you could prefer JBoss for production though (I'm still assuming you're not using EJBs, etc):
But I'm not sure this is what the app architect meant. I would try to discuss this choice with the architect, maybe he has a rationale explanation. And if really JBoss has to be used in production, you can always use Tomcat or Jetty during development.
JBoss is an Application Server while Tomcat is a Servlet container
So JBoss may be better than Tomcat in the sense it contains it, plus other components. That's it.
If you're not going to use those other components, you're wasting resources. If you need those other components then Tomcat is not enough.
It depends, probably your Architect has something else in mind.
I wonder what would he say if you ask him directly?
If you use JBoss, you can pay Jboss.org for support. But it is not the case with Tomcat.
JBoss is J2EE specification compliant, it supports J2EE specification very well, such as EJB, JTA,JMS, JNDI and etc. Tomcat is only a servlet container, although it also supports a bit J2ee specification. When you want to use J2EE component, you should consider JBoss first.
Forgot a point, JBoss supports JMX very well, especially in version 4.*. I have experienced a project, it doesn't have a web UI, JBoss is used just as a platform and EJB container to integrate all the standalone application on it use MBean.
To say that any tool or framework is just 'better' is ridiculous. It always depends on the situation, architecture, etc. You don't necessarily want to use a hammer to drive a screw.
I wrote JBoss in Action, so I obviously like the JBoss technology, but I'll be the first to say that JBoss can be overkill in many situations. For example, for the last two sites I've developed, it made more sense to build with Grails and deploy on a standalone Tomcat instance.
Its a bit unfair to say that all you get when using JBoss is EJB and JMS. JBoss offers many services and features, including:
The thing that attracts many architects to JBoss is its flexibility. It uses a plugin architecture that allows you to add and remove services. As other have said, in uses Tomcat as its Servlet container, so you can literally whittle JBoss down to where it is practically just a Tomcat server. What is the benefit of doing this? Future proofing if you think that you're going to utilize other features of JBoss.
These services in JBoss come pre-integrated and strive to provide a consistent deployment model that minimizes your effort in writing application logic or configuration to integrate them yourself. That being said, other frameworks like Spring also do a great job of supporting a uniform ways of integrating many popular libraries and frameworks. But since they focus on integrating 3rd party libraries, the interoperability between services is up to you. Because JBoss is building the services and the integration platform, they spend time developing (and providing support) for interoperability.
Some questions to ask when making a choice are:
Not to sound like a shameless plug, but the first chapter of JBoss in Action is available for free on the Manning website. Though we don't do a direct comparison between JBoss and other applications servers and deployment environments in the chapter, we do talk about the architectural differences a bit, which is relevant to your question.