Will Oracle retire 10gAS in favor of WebLogic?

Question

Oracle purchased BEA and their WebLogic suite of tools. They still have a competing product in their own 10gAS Application Server. Both are J2EE, enterprise grade, servers. While it make take some time due to maintenance agreements, it would be unusual for them to continue to produce two products within the same architectural space. So...

1. Do you believe that they will retire their previous application server in favor of WebLogic?
2. Do you believe that WebLogic is the one that will be retired?
3. How long of a process is this likely to be? Years?

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Edit: Anyone in tune with what they have done with PeopleSoft vs. Oracle Applications? Likely the same pattern will be followed.

Answer 1

As you say, it would be unusual for them to maintain two products within the same architectural space. I don't know java app servers, but given the climate of financial markets, and that it would probably take lots of money to maintain two such app servers, I would say it's a foregone conclusion that one of the products will be cut, and sooner than later at that (as soon as the cost of settling breach of maintenance contracts falls below what it costs to maintain the outgoing product). As for which one will go, my bet will be on WebLogic because it "wasn't invented here"...

Answer 2

Yes. They have already announced their position. OC4J/Orion will continue to be supported however the weblogic release is the future of the platform.

Answer 3

You can go through a (rather long) PDF strategy briefing from Oracle. The key slide, though, is probably #48. Oracle has put BEA Weblogic on the "Strategic Products" list and the Oracle Application Server on the "Continue and Converge" list. So Oracle has indicated that the Oracle App Server will be going away (in marketing-ese that it will be converged with the BEA products) and that BEA Weblogic is the strategic direction going forward.

As to question 3, I'm sure it'll be at least a few years depending on your definition of "retired".

Answer 4

In Oracle terms, the product "Oracle Application Server" contains much more than just the J2EE server. One component is the J2EE server, which used to be OC4J. Oracle has announced that their new strategic J2EE server is WebLogic.

There will therefore still be a product called "Oracle Application Server", but from version 11g onwards, the J2EE server will be WebLogic.

Answer 5

Oracle will release a 11g version oc4j but after that wls will be the preferred j2ee server. wls is much better with clustering and has a lot of jms / jdbc options.