Yes, I agree that Orion can be frustrating -- basically since you
just have to hack it in order to understand what's going on.
However, I do get the impression that Orion is a good performing
app. server, but I don't really have any evidence to validate my
feelings since we haven't yet done any serious
testing with it.
In any case, I didn't have any trouble reading properties files
in the class path. Also, Oracle distribute the Orion server as a
single ZIP file -- oc4j.zip. Oracle calls it "Oracle Containers
for J2EE", but it is really just the Orion server. Therefore you
can install and run OC4J without 9iAS at all.
However, I don't think that using 9iAS will ease your migration
from PL/SQL to EJB. I think you will have the same amount of work
regardless of which app. server you choose.
Hope this helps,
Avi.
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