It’s hard to believe that it’s only been 10 years since BEA acquired and commercialized WebLogic, signaling the start of the commercial Java application server market.

Application server technologies allowed Java to dominate in enterprise Web application development by providing scalable, secure and high performance solutions based on the Java language. Sun’s J2EE specification provided the foundation for Java application servers; standards-based mechanisms for object relational mapping, security, messaging, transactions and the other necessities of high-end enterprise computing.

BEA attained first mover advantage in the explosive growth of J2EE-based enterprise applications, but IBM rapidly set in pursuit with their WebSphere product line. WebSphere was originally an amalgam of fairly loosely integrated offerings, but IBM invested heavily in the development and marketing of the platform and by 2005 had overtaken BEA as the premier application server.

Throughout this period, Oracle was determined to become a player in the J2EE application server space, first with its homegrown server, and then by the acquisition of the respected Orion application server. Oracle’s application server was rarely used for custom applications, but thanks to its integration into the Oracle application suite, and the Oracle ecosystem, Oracle achieved a respectable market share and the number-three position by 2007.

With the long-anticipated acquisition of BEA by Oracle earlier this year, Oracle now becomes the #1 application server player. Speculation continues about whether Oracle will maintain WebLogic as a distinct technology, but Oracle clearly acquired BEA more for its customer base than for its technology.

Meanwhile, free and open source software (FOSS) application servers continue to thrive. Apache Tomcat, originally the Sun reference implementation for Java servlets, is very widely used both as an embedded application server and for some serious applications. Tomcat doesn’t implement the full J2EE stack, and is specifically not intended for industrial strength deployments. Nevertheless it is free and well-understood, and performance is more than adequate for many applications.

JBoss, an open source implementation of the J2EE specification that incorporates Tomcat, gained popularity throughout the decade and by 2007 37 percent of J2EE users had some JBoss presence in the organization. Red Hat acquired JBoss in 2006 and while this ensured healthy funding for JBoss development, JBoss founder Marc Flurry departed, and JBoss development activities are now more narrowly focused around Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

After losing out to BEA and IBM early on, Sun’s J2EE application server - now named GlassFish - has picked up renewed momentum over recent years and may become attractive to those who want a FOSS based server but feel that JBoss is too tied to Red Hat’s corporate strategy.

Increasingly, Java application servers are hosting more than just Java apps. Both Ruby and Python can now run inside an application server JVM, and the popular Ruby on Rails and Django frameworks are supported or nearly supported (respectively) within the JVM. Running these Web 2.0 frameworks within the application server JVM provides a degree of control and security that will lessen the concerns of many enterprise adopters.

While Java application servers have come a long way and have contributed a great deal to enterprise architectures, their dominance has waned over the past few years. New applications developed on the Microsoft.NET stack now match J2EE applications, and Web 2.0 frameworks such as Rails are increasingly being used in places where J2EE would once have been the obvious choice. That seems to be the way of it in IT architectures - after only 10 years you’re way beyond “mature.” However, I don’t think we’ll be seeing a retirement party for J2EE anytime soon.

About the Author:

Guy Harrison is a chief architect for database solutions at Quest Software, and is a recognized expert with over 15 years of experience in application and database administration, development, performance tuning and project management. Harrison is the author of Oracle SQL High Performance Tuning (Prentice Hall) and MySQL Stored Procedure Programming (O’Reilly), and is a regular speaker at trade shows and events Information about Quest Software can be found at www.quest.com.