Weblogic vs Jboss
Application servers play a major role in modern enterprise computing by acting as the platform for the development, deployment, and integration of enterprise applications. Application servers facilitate common functions, such as connection, security and integration. This allows developers to focus only on the business logic. Two of the popular Java EE-based application servers are WebLogic and Jboss application servers. Typically, WebLogic is used in large enterprises, while JBoss is preferred by small/midsize companies.
What is WebLogic?
WebLogic (Oracle WebLogic Server) is a cross-platform Java EE application server developed by Oracle Corporation. WebLogic server offers a family of products based on Java EE platform. Apart from the application server, it is composed of WebLogic Portal (an enterprise portal), EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) platform, WebLogic Tuxedo (a transaction server), WebLogic Communication Platform and a web server. Current version of the application server is WebLogic Server 11gR1, which was released in May, 2011. WebLogic application server is a part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware portfolio. Major databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL server, DB2, etc. are supported by the WebLogic server. An Eclipse Java IDE called WebLogic Workshop comes with the WebLogic platform. WebLogic application server is interoperable with .NET, and can be easily integrated with CORBA, COM+, WebSphere MQ and JMS. BPM and data mapping is supported by the Process Edition of the server. Furthermore, WebLogic server provides support for various open standards like SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, WSRP, XSLT, XQuery and JASS.
What is Jboss?
JBoss Application Server (JBoss AS) is a free and open source application server developed by RedHat. It is a Java EE-based application server, which not only runs on Java but implements the Java EE portion as well. JBoss is a cross-platform server, which runs on any system running Java. Current version of JBoss is 6.0, which was released in December, 2010. JBoss currently supports Java EE 6 Web Profile (but the full Java EE 6 stack is not supported). JBoss supports various technologies including AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming), clustering, caching, distributed deployment, EJB, JPA, JASS, JCA, JME, JMS, JNDI, JTA, JACC, Java Mail, JSF, JSP, Web services, JDBC and OSGi.
What is the difference between WebLogic and Jboss?
Although, WebLogic server and JBoss server are two of the popular Java EE-based application servers, they have their own differences. WebLogic application server is developed by Oracle, while JBoss application server is a free and open source product. Latest version of JBoss server supports Java EE 6 Web Profile, but the latest release of WebLogic server only supports Java EE 5. You can change console requirements depending on the requirements in WebLogic, as Self Console 7001 is included, but since JBoss is dependent on Tomcat Server, this is not possible in JBoss. Multiple ways of deployment is possible in Web Logic, while Ant alone could be used for deployment in JBoss, and it is very quick and easy.
Even though, WebLogic is an expensive product, it has several features that are not provided in JBoss. For example, WebLogic’s web-based administrator console can be used for the configuration of JMS, Data Sources, and security settings, etc. Mind you, configuration and administration is pretty simple in JBoss, but a UI is not provided. While, clustering is supported for all the APIs in WebLogic, clustering is supported only for some of the features in JBoss. WebLogic offers JMS clustering whereas, JBoss does not. Standard JDBC API is used for database connectivity in WebLogic, but database connectivity is available in JBoss only through jca-jdbc wrappers, which means that sometimes the programmer has to write his own code.
WebLogic is highly expensive, given that having a separate web server incurs additional cost, while vertical scaling (e.g. addition of more CPUs) costs extra money as well. Despite its cost, WebLogic is used more in industry due to its reliability. But, for projects that are not overly complex, JBoss is a good option (as its performance is still not proven in production environments), since it is free. Therefore, JBoss is more popular among small to midsized companies who are unable to afford the high priced WebLogic.