Level: Introductory Shyam Nagarajan (shyam@us.ibm.com), Certified Consulting IT Specialist , IBM
15 Nov 2005 The introduction of IBM® WebSphere® Application Server Community Edition is a golden opportunity for small and medium sized organizations to leverage the support and the architecture of WebSphere Application Server and Apache Geronimo as a superior alternative to JBoss Application Server. This document describes resources to help you migrate applications running on JBoss to WebSphere Application Server Community Edition.
Apache Geronimo and WebSphere Application Server Community Edition
When developed to J2EE™ specifications and open standards, J2EE applications are portable and can be easily migrated from one J2EE container to another. JBoss Application Server is a J2EE 1.4 compliant open source application server for the development, testing, and deployment J2EE enterprise applications.
IBM WebSphere Application Server Community Edition is a J2EE container based on the open source Apache Geronimo project. Geronimo is also a J2EE 1.4 certified application server that leverages other open source projects using micro kernel architecture to provide J2EE services. Its unique deployment architecture is based on intelligent management beans that enable different systems to operate harmoniously to provide the functionality as a J2EE container.
Some high level features of WebSphere Application Server Community Edition include:
- J2EE 1.4 certified application server running on IBM 1.4.2 JDK.
- Apache Tomcat as the default servlet container.
- Bundled IBM Cloudscape database support.
- Out of the box support for MS SQL Server and Oracle Databases.
- Eclipse-based Web tools support for deploying and debugging directly into the server.
- Run time customization, based on micro kernel architecture of Geronimo.
- Centralized configuration and control.
- Small footprint.
- Liberal product licensing.
Additionally, some benefits of WebSphere Application Server Community Edition include IBM's provision of a support model for enterprises that use the product, and the Geronimo GBean architecture, which lends itself to an optimized environment for quick application development, testing, and deployment.
Since WebSphere Application Server Community Edition is deeply rooted in Apache Geronimo Milestone 5 (M5), migrating a JBoss application to Geronimo M5 will likewise enable that migrated application to operate under WebSphere Application Server Community Edition as well. The JBoss to Geronimo series of articles referenced below address the migration of JBoss applications to Apache Geronimo, focusing on application code and packaging changes with respect to the migration, providing step-by-step migration instructions, and pointing out differences between the two application servers. Following the processes outlined in these articles will help you migrate your JBoss applications for use with WebSphere Application Server Community Edition.
JBoss to Geronimo migration articles:
Geronimo to Community Edition:
Conclusion
The migration information presented here is the first step in exploiting all that open source has to offer an application server environment, with a gateway to the advanced features, benefits, and technology of other WebSphere Application Server family products.
Resources
About the author  | | | Shyam Nagarajan is a IBM Certified Consulting IT Specialist with the Advanced Technology Practice group of IBM Software Services for WebSphere. His current focus has been migration from competitive platforms and previous versions to WebSphere Application Server and Web services. Previously, Shyam has developed automated solutions for Java-based migrations and has written and presented several white papers on this topic. |
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