Hi Randy,
This is specifically in response to #4. I'm not sure why you would need a
lot of expensive tools to build Java web services, you could get and do
everything for free (except the physical server) if you wanted to.
Apache's SOAP implementation (http://xml.apache.org/soap/) is free and
includes IBM's work (IBM-SOAP). A list of some SOAP implementations is at
http://www.soapware.org/directory/4/implementations. Full fledged J2EE
application servers run from free (http://www.jboss.org) to lots of $$$
(http://www.bea.com). You shouldn't need a full J2EE server to run web
services though, just a web container like Tomcat (free)
http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/.
You can find some user reviews of different J2EE application servers at
http://www.theserverside.com/reviews/index.jsp. They have a comparison
matrix at http://www.flashline.com/components/appservermatrix.jsp (but be
warned, not all the information is complete and up to date).
My preferred application server is Orion, http://www.orionserver.com.
Commercial deployment is $1500 per machine. It was recently licensed by
Oracle for their J2EE product (but you pay a whole lot more for Oracle but
you get some extras). Documentation is not the greatest, but the guys who
wrote it on are experts on a couple of the different JCPs so it stays
compliant to the specifications. A couple of pay-for-support companies are
offering their services for Orion if that is a criteria. Last year Orion
performed some benchmarks against some competitors (and IIS). Orion running
a JSP beat IIS running the "same" code in an ASP
(http://www.orionserver.com/benchmarks/benchmark.html). Benchmarks being
benchmarks, remember to take everything with a grain of salt. However, if
you don't have time to become familiar with the details of J2EE then this
probably isn't the server for you though.
There are always cons, so what don't you get with the open-source/low-cost
products? You probably won't find visual helpers or wizards to help you
develop, which means you had better know the specifications pretty well.
Documentation and support is sometimes lacking. Usually they have a very
helpful user community to help offset some of this, but you definitely won't
get the help desk type of assistance from a powerhouse like BEA, Oracle,
IBM, etc. Does this make them bad? Not necessarily. It depends what
qualifies as "bad" for your particular environment and situation.
Hopefully this has given you some more information and resources to help you
in your evaluation.
-jason
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