Introduction
By Allan McNaughton
Choosing the right e-business infrastructure platform has never been
more important, or more difficult. With the proliferation of technology
vendors it is all too easy to end up with a mishmash of software and
hardware that does not work well together -- costs mount, schedules
slip and business opportunities are lost. While the choice of a
specific platform is no guarantee of success, selecting infrastructure
components that work together seamlessly can overcome many challenges.
The right choice of software and hardware can greatly speed development
while providing a scalable platform for future growth. The wrong choice
can hinder even the most talented developer and burden the organization
with less than stellar cost efficiencies. Given the importance of the
decision, one should seriously consider the option of BEA’s Java*-based
WebLogic* Server 8.1 running on low cost, high performance Intel®
processor-based servers.
The Power of Collaboration
Developers will find that BEA WebLogic Server
offers a robust application development platform that boosts
productivity with industry leading development tools, strict compliance
with Java 2 Enterprise Edition* (J2EE) standards and a rich set of
interoperability APIs. In addition to having the confidence that comes
from deploying an application server that has been battle-tested at
very large installations, IT managers will find that BEA WebLogic
Server is uniquely designed to deliver optimal performance for
enterprise Java applications on cost effective Intel® Xeon® and
Itanium® processors.
BEA and Intel have worked together to create a seamlessly integrated
platform that enables developers to rapidly create server-side
applications that are optimized to achieve scalable performance on
flexible Intel architecture processors. By combining their substantial
product engineering and market development resources, Intel and BEA
have delivered a solution that is more than the sum of its parts; it
delivers best-in-class performance, outstanding productivity, lower
acquisition and operating costs, and the agility to meet current and
future business challenges. And, with a combined ecosystem of tens of
thousands of application providers, system manufacturers and system
integrators, you have access to one of the world’s largest communities
for extending and supporting your core business solutions.
Boost Developer Productivity
To help bring spiraling development costs
under control, BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 is fully compliant with J2EE
1.3, the programming model of choice for development of
enterprise-class server applications. By building standards-based
applications, enterprises protect technology investments and maintain
maximum flexibility, choice, and interoperability. WebLogic Server’s
strict conformance to the J2EE specification allows developers to take
advantage of the many third-party offerings of Java packages, database
drivers, and vendor-specific application adapters, as well as develop
their own applications.
BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 has validated implementations of the standard
J2EE interfaces and also supports tools to help developers customize as
necessary with minimal cost and effort. These features allow
applications to provide more functionality, be created faster, exhibit
lower maintenance costs and deliver a greater return on investment.
This standards-based approach to software development allows an
organization to choose from a large pool of trained J2EE developers,
who can then further boost their productivity by using industry leading
development tools such as BEA’s WebLogic Workshop* 8.1.
The BEA WebLogic Workshop visual development environment lets you do
more with less by insulating developers from the complexities of
enterprise-class application development; they no longer need to learn
the intricacies of Java Messaging Service* (JMS), Enterprise JavaBeans*
(EJBs), Java Database Connectivity* (JDBC), J2EE Connector
Architecture* (J2CA) APIs, or the details of invoking external Web
Services. By automatically managing most of the “plumbing code”
typically associated with writing J2EE applications, BEA WebLogic
Workshop ensures that developers focus on writing code that delivers
business value, and reduces development time from hours to minutes.
As e-business infrastructures commonly include legacy applications
running in distinctly different environments, it is critical that an
application server offer out-of-the box interoperability. Acting as the
glue that unifies the enterprise, BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 provides a
full suite of integration technologies that further reduce development
costs. WebLogic Server implements the latest Web services technologies,
including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Services
Description Language (WSDL), Universal Description Discovery and
Integration (UDDI), and XMLBeans. It also has built-in interoperability
with Microsoft .NET* Web services and supports an array of native
integration capabilities, including Java Message Service (JMS), Java
Connector Architecture (JCA), WebLogic/Tuxedo integration, Microsoft
COM+ connectivity and COBRA support.
Faster is Cheaper
As much as BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 helps you
develop higher quality applications in less time, it also helps run
them more efficiently. Faster response times and greater scalability
allow enterprises to use less hardware to support the same number of
users or transactions, dramatically driving down costs. Fewer low cost
Intel architecture servers, with fewer WebLogic Server CPU licenses
means lower costs across the board—hardware, software, support, and
operational.
Although BEA WebLogic Server runs on a wide variety of hardware
platforms, it is uniquely optimized for maximum performance on the
Intel architecture. Unlike other application server Java Virtual
Machines (JVMs), the WebLogic JRockit* JVM is built from the ground up
for demanding server-side applications—where the focus is on achieving
the fastest response times while still reliably handling the heaviest
loads, effectively scaling as usage grows, and providing real-time
visibility into server usage and resource availability. JRockit
efficiently meets these needs and enables Java applications to run with
increased reliability and performance on a lower cost, standard-based
platform.
BEA WebLogic JRockit uses state-of-the-art optimization technology to
achieve the highest performance possible on Intel architecture. The
system is constructed around an adaptive optimizing compiler that
accelerates Java byte code execution. Internal functions like thread
synchronization, object allocation, array copying, and file/network
communications are all streamlined for speed. WebLogic JRockit is
designed to take maximum advantage of architectural innovations such as
the Intel NetBurst® microarchitecture, Hyper-Threading Technology(HT
Technology), and integrated three-level cache. Similarly, it is also
optimized for the Intel Itanium processors 64-bit address space, large
caches and highly parallel EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction
Computing) architecture.
Maximum cost savings can be achieved by deploying the BEA WebLogic
JRockit JVM on clustered 2-way, 4-way, 8-way or higher Intel-based
servers--where it can utilize additional CPUs and memory without
reconfiguration, letting applications scale nearly linearly to support
growing user numbers. In this configuration WebLogic Server supports
automatic failover for workloads, transactions, and user session
states—furnishing high-end availability for complex business critical
applications. This gives IT organizations exceptional flexibility for
designing solutions that closely match business and workload
requirements. They can scale up onto large Intel-based servers to
reduce server counts and optimize performance for each application.
They can also scale out onto multiple, clustered servers to improve
overall capacity and availability. By balancing these strategies, they
can scale appropriately to optimize performance and minimize costs for
every application.
Case in Point
Ultimately the infrastructure selection
decision comes down to confidence; can the platform under consideration
deliver as promised? To answer that critical question it is often
helpful to rely on the experiences of others.
Let’s look at SCOOT France, an “infomediary” and the country’s leading
provider of business and service directories. When its current RISC*
server solution proved unable to handle rising transaction volumes,
SCOOT France looked at changing its application infrastructure. After
extensive analysis and benchmarking, SCOOT France’s IT managers
selected BEA WebLogic Server running on Intel Xeon® processor-based
servers with HT Technology. The solution features a clustered
architecture that delivers load balancing, connection pooling, caching
and other technologies that ensure high performance and scalability.
And automatic failover at the Web, business logic and database tiers
helps ensure that customer service is uninterrupted.
SCOOT France choose to deploy it on an Intel architecture-based
platform to enjoy advantages in cost, openness, performance and
flexibility. SCOOT France is using a cluster of powerful HP ProLiant*
ML530 systems with dual Intel Xeon processors at the application tier,
and HP ProLiant DL360 servers with dual Pentium® III Xeon® processors
on the front end. Systems based on the Xeon processor offer top
performance and ready scalability, allowing SCOOT France to add
capacity as needed. For instance, the ProLiant ML530 offers extensive
internal system expansion capabilities with twelve hotplug hard drive
bays, eight PCI slots and up to 4 GB of memory. In addition, SCOOT
France can add more servers to the cluster, protecting its IT
investment and adding the performance to support a broadening customer
base and the addition of new services.
The effort to switch platforms, with the assistance of BEA’s services
team, was accomplished in just one week. Now, BEA WebLogic Server hosts
the Java applications SCOOT France uses to receive inquiries, query its
search engines and format the results for the appropriate channel. To
meet projected increases in traffic SCOOT also tested and installed
WebLogic JRockit. This resulted in a solution with response times up to
20 percent lower than traditional JVM’s, translating into immediate
cost savings as less hardware is needed to run the service. Stability
also improved enormously: systems that used to crash once an hour now
run without fault, freeing up a team of eight IT technicians for other
tasks.
By choosing BEA WebLogic Server and an Intel architecture-based
platform, SCOOT France managed to lower total cost of ownership with a
solution that delivers the highest levels of performance, reliability,
scalability and manageability. SCOOT France now has the confidence that
their infrastructure can provide the guaranteed uninterrupted
availability and immediate response times necessary to power their
business to ever higher levels of success in the competitive directory
services market.
Make the Right Choice
In a world full of infrastructure choices, the
combination of BEA WebLogic Server and Intel architecture servers is
unique in that it offers a seamlessly integrated solution with widely
acknowledged cost efficiencies. The platform provides exceptional
support for developing and deploying n-tier applications and integrates
easily with legacy systems to deliver unmatched agility. Furthermore,
WebLogic Server is the only Java-based application server that is
expressly designed to make the most of Intel Xeon® and Itanium®
processor-based servers. If selecting a standards-based infrastructure
solution that provides the best technologies to lower development and
operational costs is the goal, the combination of BEA WebLogic software
running on Intel Xeon and Itanium-based processor architecture may be
your best road to meeting that goal.
Additional Resources
Articles
Developer Centers
About the Author
Allan
McNaughton is a patent holding technologist and veteran writer with
more than fifteen years industry experience. He is the president of
Technical Insight LLC*,
a firm specializing in the composition of high-technology white papers.
Mr. McNaughton is a frequent contributor to leading technology
publications.
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