Dear Marc,
To start with, I thank Javaranch for giving us this opportunity to share our thoughts and learn from each other. I thank all you great ranchers for your valuable discussions, queries and suggestions which has always helped us evolve our products to our users' expectations.
Similar to the earlier discussions, I am sure that at the end of this week, we all will add value to each others motives.
Coming to your ques: I've been reading various industry reports from time to time and there have been many studies regarding the comparison of various application servers. I believe WebLogic to be on the top of the list. But recently, I have also observed, very quick changes in WAS (WebSphere) like compliance with
J2EE 1.3.
Though Sun also launched iPlanet (which is derived from NAS (Netscape iPlanet App Server)), it is still to gain wider acception by Industry compared to the famous ones. Also, we've seen emergence of App Servers like Pramati (industry's first independently developed application server to achieve J2EE™ v 1.3 compatibility), which is going great. All this tells atleast onething : that the market of App Server has a great future and one needs to keep it updated to the latest trends.
From the career perspective, before you have hands on at any of the app server,
you should have a thourough understanding of the App Server Concepts. Having this, picking any app server would not be a problem; specially with the emergence of standards which are getting matured day by day. If you ask me, which certification should i go for : you should pick the one, you are going to work on. Otherwise, you can choose either of WebLogic or WebSphere; iPlanet still has time.
Here are 2 good articles :
1.) Which App Server suits you?
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-08-2001/jw-0817-soapbox.html 2.)
http://www.dpu.se/ovum/ovuaps_e.html I hope this helps.
Thanks and regards
Pradeep
Whizlabs Software
http://www.whizlabs.com
