At 11:12 24.11.00 , you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'd like to know, is anyone currently using Orion in a production
>environment? The rather high number of issues people report here bothers
>me because I'd like to get serious with a particular EJB server and my
>opinion was that Orion was the right choice because of it's low cost and
>features.
>In addition, I'd like to know if Orion's HTTP server is suitable for
>production work, I really would like to have a unified environment instead
>of having a separate web server for my JSPs and servlets.
yes, we've been using it for the past 6 months in production (mainly
content management and ecommerce) with over 10 different j2ee applications
extensively using servlets, ejb (lots of cmp) so I think I can say that I
know what I'm talking about. it's a two-edged sword. as you mention, the
integration of having one consistent all-java j2ee environment is of great
value and orion's deployment concept is very logical and well-designed.
however there are some serious issues with a number of parts of the server
(check the archives for JMS and a number of issues regarding
exclusive-write-access settings as examples) some of which have brought us
in very awkward situations, many times having to work around them with a
lot of effort. I would say that in some areas orion is production ready, in
some it's not well-tested at all. do extensive testing and if every feature
you use works, buy it. it's a great deal for the price. however, there is a
substantial risk involved that you may run into a serious bug in a
situation when you least need it and then you might be helpless with no
source and maybe no fix available for a few weeks/months (been there). I'm
not saying this to bash evermind (I sympathize a lot with them actually)
but I'm simply speaking from experience to help other people make an
informed decision as I would expect them to do if I asked about a product I
don't know yet.
my personal opinion on this is that evermind should deliver source (while
retaining full rights on enhancements and bug fixes) with the product to
eliminate that risk. other commercial projects like orbaccus
(http://www.ooc.com) have shown that they still make a lot of money despite
shipping source for more than five years now. I'm sure about 80% of the
bugs our team has reported would have been fixed by us immediately or at
least would have been accurately described to the line of source code that
has to be changed.
I've brought this up to karl and magnus but they don't want to do this and
it simply is their baby and therefore their decision (they probably think
I'm either a parrot or insane, repeating the same stuff over and over again
;-).
It's only for that (having been helpless in many situations when we least
neded it), that we are seriously considering moving to jboss as soon as
their cmp support has met a certain level of quality, although their server
is inferior to orion in many regards, especially as far as the overall
integration is concerned. BUT their main architects/developers take the
time to answer user questions on their user list every day and if there is
a small bug (one or two line fix typically) you can just make it and submit
it instead of spending 10 times as much effort assembling a test case to
submit it to the developers. Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking of
open-sourcing the project in the sense that I want to tell them how to
develop the server because they are best at it. It's all about fixing (many
times silly) bugs which can make your life hell if a project deadline is
approaching and you simply cannot do anything about it and a workaround
involves a lot of effort.
I very much hope the situation with orion will improve because it's great
product with no equivalent in functionality/price ratio at the moment.
any other orion users have an opion on that?
regards,
robert
>Regards,
>
>Paul
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(-) Robert Kr�ger
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