WebObjects capabilities (was Re: Macosx server web capabilities)

[Peter Adams <padams@stanford.edu>]

(Apologies for any duplication, but this came back to me from the list server
with a blank message so I'm resending it. As this isn't the first time, does
anyone know why these blank messages happen?)

Timothy J Luoma wrote:

  On Sun, 3 Jan 1999, Jeroen Clarysse wrote:

  >       What about webobjects ? WO descriptions on the net are always very
    > impressive, but it is ever really clear WHAT it does, and how much it
    > costs...

    I too would like to see a clear "I've never heard of WO, why should I buy
    it?" explanation come from somewhere.


As a relative newcomer to WebObjects I'm not as experienced as many on the list,

but I can at least relate some of my reasons for selecting it for my
current project. WebObjects is an application development system for
implementing databased applications in the web environment. With a supplied
transaction server application, it provides web application server capabilities
at least similar to the more heavily marketed  products such as Sapphire,
Kiva and NetDynamics. We will have to wait for a serious review of WebObjects
and the others to compare performance between them.

For me, however, what makes WebObjects stand out is that it is an integrated
part of a much larger, very comprehensive, very integrated and strictly
object-oriented enviroment providing interface, data access and toolkit
resources for any type of application development. In addition this environment
is database, operating system and hardware independent. This supports
scalability and easy porting as requirements change. More than this level of
description I'll leave to the experts here on the list and the marketing folks.

For an additional perspective on the value of a comprehensive and integrated
development environment, take a look at the Java George columns in
Java Developer's Journal  (George Kassabgi of Progress Software). He has written

several on the problems of utilizing a "best of breed" approach to
development tools (IDE's, drivers, database backends, frontends, etc.) resulting

in problems of  integrating version updates, varying capabilities, vendor
changes, etc. A recent issue (vol 3, issue 10) applied this discussion to
application servers.

Pete

--
Peter Adams
Systems SW Developer
Stanford Univ Language Center
vc: 650-725-7909
em: padams@stanford.edu
http://www.stanford.edu