I know this is kind of an obscure area of the forums but these are questions and 
responses based on a request from the JBoss PR folks quite some time ago and since 
nothing ever became of it I thought I would share it here.  

JBoss has been an absolutely outstanding product and I continue to look at new ways to 
integrate it into our architecture.  Some of this sounds like advertising, but as I 
mentioned it's just the responses to questions posed and I figured it's best just to 
share them in full.


Jeff Gordon
Senior Application Architect
Connectivity Solutions
ChemConnect, Inc.



* Can you please provide an overview of the your company, product, its target market, 
etc?

ChemConnect was founded in 1995, and has since established itself as a leader in 
helping companies optimize their purchasing and sales processes for chemical 
feedstocks, chemicals, plastics, and related products through the use of e-commerce.  
The company is committed to innovating and improving transaction processes for buyers 
and sellers in multiple industries around the world.

Using innovative ChemConnect Solutions -- based on a unique combination of market 
information, industry expertise, e-commerce tools and services, and an active network 
of trading partners -- more than 9,000 Member companies from 150 countries can access 
reliable market information, reduce process inefficiencies, and improve profitability.


* What is your position/title?  What are you responsible for?

I am the Senior Application Architect for the Connectivity Solutions and IÃÂm 
responsible for architecture and design as well as a hefty amount of coding.  The 
Connectivity Solutions consist of an XML messaging hub (Envera Hub) delivering supply 
chain documents to and from ERP systems or via an internal account for browser access 
through a web application called Envera Direct (ED).  Additionally, another web 
application integrated in ÃÂEDÃÂ is called Customer Self-Serve (CSS) allows 
customers to see all documents they have sent and received through the Envera Hub.


* How long have you used JBoss and why did you start using it?

Our product is built entirely in Java and our development group has long been a fan of 
open source products.  We have chosen and participated in many open source projects 
such as; Xerces, Xalan, BouncyCastle, Axis, DOM4J, Ant, Junit, and of course JBoss.  
We started early in our product life cycle (about 5 years ago) evaluating various 
application servers to deploy our product on, and at least for the past few years 
JBoss stood out as favorite among the developers.  However, our corporate climate and 
customer expectations dictated that a ÃÂname brandÃÂ product be used, but a 
development version running on JBoss was always around and well tested.

Around 2 or 3 years ago we deployed our web application entirely on an early version 
of 2.x JBoss and it has been a rock solid performer ever since.  The web application 
is now running 2.4.x on Solaris with an Apache front end and we have not had any 
problems to speak of.

The hub application consists of a set of DMZ and application servers all running JBoss 
3.0.x under Java 1.4.1 on Solaris.  This architecture has been in place in our QA 
environment since April 2003 and was in production four months later.  In evaluating 
our DMZ needs, we wanted to use a Java-based web server that could use a standard 
keystore to provide client authentication for SSL.  As digital certificates for new or 
existing customers change or get added to our ÃÂCertificate StoreÃÂ, new keystore 
files are generated and deployed to the DMZ boxes to drastically reduce the 
maintenance inherent in certificate-based systems.  JBoss being bundled with Jetty was 
a perfect solution for our needs. 

I also started a project to use JBoss to house an ÃÂinformation hubÃÂ for our 
on-line commodities trading application for distribution and retrieval of trading 
data. The event-driven hub consolidates and delivers information to a variety of 
subscribers in multiple protocols such as; e-mail and instant message to users 
watching trading activity, XML to ERP and risk management systems on deal completion, 
and binary to Bloomberg for real-time and summarized product pricing data.  This 
system has been in production since September 2003 and to date we have had excellent 
performance and no problems with it.  


* Was anyone else involved in the decision to use JBoss? Did you have to "sell" it to 
your management team? If so, how did you go about doing this?

Performance, cost, and ease of code deployment are the key factors that drove the 
decision to deploy JBoss.  The management team was part of the decision, but the 
judgment of the technical team and problems with the old application server were the 
driving factors in finally getting JBoss initially deployed to production.  Since our 
initial usage, it sells itself and I wouldn't consider deploying on anything else.


* What version of JBoss are you using?

2.4.x for our web application and 3.0.x for our hub application.  Nukes is on the 
table with 3.2.3 for the possibility of porting our CSS/ED application to provide a 
more easily managed and community oriented place for customers to visit.


* What integration/application development problem does JBoss help you solve? How 
important is it to your work? 

A big development plus is that JBoss has such a light footprint and a file system 
directory is just about all thatÃÂs required to run it, so our developers can have a 
local JBoss servers for prototypes, proof of concept, or items that you know may 
affect other development work.


* What other software and hardware is JBoss used in conjunction with?

We typically develop using Solaris servers, but our shop has multiple copies of JBoss 
running on Windows and Linux desktops as well.  Our customer facing communication 
channel is almost entirely HTTPS so other products are not a big concern.  We have 
customers using webMethods, BizTalk, WebLogic, SAP, and other applications as well as 
a variety of browsers.


* What do you think about the software's performance? What are the main benefits of 
using JBoss? 

Performance is outstanding, and code deployment has become trivial.  Not having to 
restart a production server when new code is deployed solves a major maintenance 
problem of having to mess with load balancers, deploy code, restart application 
servers, change the load balancer settings, and so forth until all the servers are 
updated.  For a 24x7 availability goal deploying new code should not add any downtime, 
and with JBoss it doesn't.


* How many other employees and what kinds of employees use the product?

We have a couple development teams across our product lines using JBoss.


* Did you explore other competing technologies? Did JBoss replace another application 
server? If so, which one? If not, what were you using before JBoss?

As described earlier, we evaluated multiple application servers and were using one in 
particular that was chosen for political reasons.  It was a large name brand that 
wrapped Apache JServ into their own product.


* Are there any drawbacks?

We have not found any drawbacks so far.  Many critics would probably complain about 
the absence of technical support with an open source product, but I have yet to come 
across a problem that a Google search or news group posting canÃÂt solve.  The JBoss 
Group has also been more than willing to assist with any issues should a technical 
support contract be part of a corporate need.


* Do you have a services contract with JBoss as well? What has been your experience 
with JBG services? Have you used them to help you with anything significant or 
specific?

We have not used these services.


* Can you estimate the return on investment (ROI) of JBoss and JBoss Group at your 
organization, either in time or cost savings?

Cost savings specific to JBoss are difficult to measure.  JBoss facilitated much of 
our savings, but was not solely responsible.  I can say that given good-economy prices 
of some products and licenses that were replaced by our JBoss enabled applications, we 
are saving around $500,000.00 a year. 


* What publications do you read?

Lately I seem to read only on-line articles concerning specific technologies or 
initiatives I am working on or thinking about.  I usually end up just searching the 
web and reading from whatever sites show up in the results.

View the original post : 
http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3830428#3830428

Reply to the post : 
http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&p=3830428


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system
administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id70&alloc_id638&op=click
_______________________________________________
JBoss-user mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jboss-user

Reply via email to