One stack, two stack, Red Stack, Blue Stack...please help a user out

We are talking to Oracle to make the switch from Blue Stack to Red Stack. We were told in a Quest Asia User forum by Oracle Australia representatives that the switch is free for JDE customers. What was promised were licences for OAS, XML Publisher, BPEL & Oracle ESB (Enterprise Service Bus)

We have already started our upgrade with this switch as an integral point. When we approached Oracle in HK nobody knew of this. They are still finding out how to get this done. I was told by the Oracle Australia manager that there are a few sites in Australia that have done this switch free by simply signing another agreement with Oracle. But since nobody seems to have done this in this geography, its taking ages to get any confirmation.

We were told in Singapore categorically that it was free so ill be damned if I pay for anything!!!

best
shrek

We installed 8.96.2.3 on OAS 10g (Web Cache configured for compression) on our test systems and compared with 8.94.N1 on WAS 5.0.2 with IHS 2.0. The Interactive apps on 8.96 Tools on OAS are much slower than 8.94 tools on WAS. The difference is not much significant on LAN, but very significant over WAN. I am not sure if this slowness is due to Tools release 8.95 and onwards. I think OAS and Web cache with Apache 1.3.x is a big let down compared to WAS 5.0 with Apache 2.0 compression (My experience is based on 8.94 tools apps which are a bit light compared to 8.95 Tools onwards). I am not sure if the performance improved with 8.97 tools release, but we are heavily relying on Web compression piece for performance and not ready to invest on other methods. Apache 2.0 HTTP servers are known to run faster on Windows servers, so we don't know if that is the difference.

But yes, we still would like to switch to Red stack from Blue stack even though we don't use any of the complex setup like clustering and network deployment.

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It is very clear that WebLogic would be supported since Oracle owns it now.

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Do you have insider knowledge of this? I would say this is pure speculation at this point. It seems likely provided they close the deal, but I would not say it is a "sure thing".

[See attached]

Recent history speaks volumes.

JDE E1 was ported to WebLogic a short time ago. My sense was that support was withdrawn prior to the merger(s) to appease the mutual IBM-JDE investments in WebSphere.

Porting 8.96 / 8.97 would take a micro-effort and they own WebLogic. So you tell me, why wouldn't they?

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Porting 8.96 / 8.97 would take a micro-effort and they own WebLogic. So you tell me, why wouldn't they?

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Because they're too busy pushing everyone to OAS (which IS better than Websphere).

It IS interesting that Weblogic is no longer supported. I guess it is because there was so little demand for it, and, after all, it took bread away from oracles mouth (at the time). If Oracle manages to purchase it, then I'm sure they'd support it - but that is a BIG "If" right now since they obviously felt the had too many platforms to support for JAS at the time.

Just as an aside, the customer demand WAS for Oracle to support Tomcat about 4-5 years ago (because it was free) - they didn't do that back then and only added OAS recently.

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I guess it is because there was so little demand for it, and, after all, it took bread away from oracles mouth (at the time).

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I think you are a little off on the history. JDE stopped "supporting" WebLogic before Oracle bought JDE out. JDE never supported a clustered WebLogic which put WebLogic at a distinct disadvantage. The fact of the matter is that JDE customers would have used whatever app server JDE Support said to use during that time frame just to get JAS working reliably. It just so happens that the money and effort was on WebSphere at that time (2003 - 2006). OAS has only been supported since late 8.95 so they couldn't have been taking food from Oracle. This is particularly true since Oracle doesn't charge to switch from WS to OAS (as others have posted).

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Because they're too busy pushing everyone to OAS (which IS better than Websphere).

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Yes, IM&YHO, OAS is better than WebSphere. The problem for Oracle is that WebLogic has a better product, better support and better brand name recognition than OAS. IMHO, it won't be long before it is ported to WebLogic and clusterable on WebLogic.


The reality is that nearly all of the web/J2EE servers out there were at one time spawned from Apache/Tomcat. There has been significant proprietary development upon it, but the basic functionality remains (which is the way open J2EE architecture is designed to work). That's why JDE could support JRun, BEA, WebSphere and eventually OAS with just a few minor evolutions in the product.

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So you tell me, why wouldn't they?

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Because they're busy in Denver?

There is a slightly risky assumption here that Oracle bought BEA primarily because they felt their J2EE was a "superior product". Java servers are basically a commodity at this point.

Based on what I've read, I believe Oracle bought them, first and foremost, for the customer base and steady maintenance revenue stream. BEA was weak and ready for takeover; activist shareholder Carl Icahn was actively beating the drum for Oracle to be successful.

Second , Oracle wanted to keep WebLogic out of the hands of SAP, IBM and the like.

Third , WebLogic has been in play since the late 90's as far as a takeover is concerned.

Finally , WebLogic is a nice J2EE server and they have some nifty Portal technology (Aqua); they also have solid SOA. One could argue their SOA solution is the real gem here. Remember Siebel and their CRM product? Oracle is making waves with the Business Analytics piece in OBIEE....Does WebLogic J2EE server represent the kind of major technology advancement over OAS as Siebel Business Analytics represented over Oracle BI Discoverer? Of course it doesn't...so a comparison to that takeover (Oracle aquired Siebel in 2006) would be on shaky ground at best.

If recent history is of any consequence, Oracle may just as likely embrace and rebrand the WebLogic products, then start picking at the components of the BEA stack and determine which will be added to the Fusion Middleware Suite. You could guess that you may end up with a Fusion Middleware stack which includes the WebLogic server component as ancilary, much like Hyperion BI was shoved into OBIEE as "BI Plus" for the Financial Reporting capabilities. Brio, once a highly sought after management reporting application acquired by Hyperion, is now relegated to the bottom shelf.

It makes sense from an IT Managers perspective to try and cut down the number of middleware solutions supporting these applications when they have myriad Oracle apps under one roof.

Hyperion, G-Log and other Oracle aquisitions have high numbers of WebLogic as their java application server. In my opinion, OAS will slowly replace WebLogic as the J2EE server of choice for those applications for new installations; I've been told that Hyperion development has already been directed to use the entire Oracle stack as a basis for their technology foundation for development purposes. Give them time and you'll see OAS become an "automatic deployment" option in the install routine.

Please, expound the volumes of recent history. I'm interested in your take on the matter.

I never stated that I thought Oracle bought BEA exclusively because they thought WebLogic was a superior product. Software companies buy other software companies for a myriad of reasons. Since you brought up the question though, my guess is that it was: market share, products, developer-employee base, 3rd-party developer mindshare (and/or all of the above). If it weren't for the fact that the Chief Technologist on the Fusion project quit about two months ago, I would have been inclined to agree about market share. My sense is that Oracle acknowledged their own limitations with their home-grown stack, including identity management. IMHO, buying WebLogic made sense short-term because of the price and because they need the developer-employees and the WebLogic mindshare.

IMHO, you are correct in that WebLogic will eventually and inevitably be a part of whatever Fusion becomes. I doubt it will happen within 2-3 years. That's why an E1 JAS port makes sense.

I'll restate my argument. Because of recent history (E1 JAS 8.93/4 was ported to BEA Weblogic) and because it would be a minor effort to dust off the old install proc, a WebLogic port of JAS is likely. I don't think they would do it just for fun; there are some true marketing and revenue benefits for doing this.

Why? Its probably too long of a discussion for this thread but, it comes down to money. Eventually, IMHO, the name of the J2EE server could be anything. Call it Fusion AS or OAS or WebLogic Fusion app server, whatever. It won't be the J2EE server that is OAS or WebLogic right now. OAS is a reliable server and simple to administer. However it lacks a lot of the technical features that are in WebLogic and WebSphere: performance monitors and controls, full HTTP integration (including IIS), basic admin security, LDAP administration modules, failover support, etc. From a marketing perspective it lacks: 3rd party vendor support, developer support, tiered versioning, etc. Ultimately long-term, IMHO, the app server from Fusion becomes more WebLogic than OAS. But, in my estimation, this won't happen fully for 2 to 3 years. Oracle is still trying to digest several companies before WebLogic. The cost is not significant for two reasons: after the JAS install proc, the support costs upside the J2EE stack are relatively small. And, they own the WebLogic J2EE stack. Like you said, Java "servers are a commodity", so E1 JAS on WebLogic should be a piece of cake.

The money comes in by bringing more and more WebLogic mindshare into Fusion by segue-ing the products that are already in the Oracle portfolio. Why? Because there are still enormous numbers of businesses working on old disparate and competing products. If you bring a WebLogic web administrator on board by introducing him/her to JDE or Siebel, then it is a win-win. That company gets off of old products like World and onto a more modern product (eg. EOne) that their web admin guy never had the opportunity or exposure to learn. The web admin guy works with something he is familiar with (WebLogic) and learns something new (ERP / BI) and commits to the migration. Bigger software pie for Oracle; less software market for IBM. Software begets Oracle consulting, support $, mindshare, etc. etc.

I'm not sure I understand the point you are trying to with make with BI and/or Siebel. BI is an over-saturated and over-sold product. There must be 5-10 vendors in the market without a clear leader. If you are saying that BEA will get swept in immediately just like Siebel, I would have to disagree. Siebel is more marketing app; BEA is technology infrastructure (like an OS). Siebel CRM will be easy to merge into one of their other business apps. To contrast your point, you could look at PeopleSoft and JDE. These products are actively marketed as separate products and run as separate businesses. If this were not true then JDE could have been rebadged as Oracle Financials 8.12 2 year ago.

I like WebLogic too. But, I'll bet that we see a JDE JAS port to WebLogic again around the same time that either customers start asking for it en masse, or Oracle sends the directive down from Redwood Shores. Yes, we know it was supported at one time with 8.93. How many customers actually downloaded and installed it? Wasn't that really a technology alignment issue with PeopleSoft more than anything else?

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<font color="red"> OAS is a reliable server and simple to administer. However it lacks a lot of the technical features that are in WebLogic and WebSphere: performance monitors and controls, full HTTP integration (including IIS), basic admin security, LDAP administration modules, failover support, etc.</font>

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...but, Oracle Fusion Middleware does have most if not all of this, jdel6654. Please remember that when you refer to "OAS", a lot of JDE folks think about a "black box" or unknown entity that serves the JAS application. "OAS" as a product line encompassses a whole slew of components:

Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g (OEM), itself an OAS application, is the recommended tool when it comes to monitoring performance of your application JVM's. Here is a link to a PDF which contains lots of description and full color examples of those capabilities:

<font color="blue"> http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oem/pdf/oraclead4j_usagescenarios.pdf
</font>
OAS Application Server Control has basic performance graphs which tell you a little about whats going on (so OEM isn't an absolute requirement but desirable for large implementations)

There is in fact an IIS plugin for OC4J.
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http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B15904_01/web.1012/b14007/oc4jplugin.htm
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You can use standalone OHS 2.0 (you're not forced to use the OHS which ships with OAS - that version is, as you know, based on Apache 1.3 and some folks are opposed to using it for various legitimate reasons.

OAS Administration can be secured by LDAP (see below). I'm not sure which direction you're headed with this, so I'll leave it alone. Though anyone reading this can get some information about the topic at:

<font color="blue"> http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B15904_01/core.1012/b13999/overview.htm

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B15904_01/manage.1012/b14084/toc.htm
</font>
OAS Enterprise Edition ships a complete LDAP server implementation (OID) along with an SSO server. The LDAP administration piece can be handled via oiddas and even from Portal. If you license Portal, you get a limited right to use license for OID, so a full Enterprise Edition license isn't required unless you have plans to extend OID to non-Oracle apps (.NET, for instance). The more adventurous can look at Oracle Access Manager.

OAS "failover" support can be provided by Fast Connection Failover (FCF) among other methods for high availability. Remember the 'g' is supposed to stand for grid.

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<font color="red"> I'm not sure I understand the point you are trying to with make with BI and/or Siebel. BI is an over-saturated and over-sold product. There must be 5-10 vendors in the market without a clear leader. If you are saying that BEA will get swept in immediately just like Siebel, I would have to disagree. </font>

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The point I made was that Oracle already had lots of CRM capabilities, but the real value in that deal for customers, formerly known as Siebel Business Analytics, has become known as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. A single processor license lists for a quarter of a million dollars. The former Oracle BI tools are now "Standard Edition" fare and lists a single processor license for twenty thousand dollars. Price lists notwithstanding, I just don't see the same thing happening to OAS. Sure, anything could happen, but the equivalency of a Siebel like situation with BEA just doesn't seem to be there for the Java stack.

I would like to have responded sooner, but I have to take care of the people that pay my check first.

With regard to your comments on support for WLS on the original JAS port: I have no idea how many JDE customers downloaded it (nor the OAS or WebSphere ports for that matter). I have stated in previous posts that JDE did not support a clustered WLS version when it came out, so the JAS port had an inherent, critical flaw.

I read the pdf link you poseted on JVM counters & "...that's nice...". How about some counters on the other software components and hardware? How about some real graphical tools to monitor these other counters real-time? The JVM is a one component of the web app server and web service stack; it isn't the only component. Performance can be affected by many other software components: EJB cache, JDBC connection pool cache, LDAP cache, security cache, HTTP thread pool, HTTP cache, etc. There are no tools real-time (or otherwise) in base OAS to monitor these components. A graph of the JVM is not sufficient to monitor performance. By comparison, look at the Tivoli performance tools in base WebSphere. The ones you can enable real-time to monitor these activities.

As far as LDAP is concerned, I've been there and done that. Up to and including OAS 10.1.2, there isn't direct support for Active Directory LDAP (or any other LDAP besides OID). You have to go thru OID for LDAP support. We went thru the exercise of trying to get Active Directory integration with JDE 8.12. The only way it was supported was thru Oracle SSO and OID. And, to get this working you have to have a synchronization process set up between OID and Active Directory. The Oracle consultants we talked with said this was a significant project for companies with 1000+ accounts in AD. That is _NOT_ LDAP support. WebLogic and WebSphere provide for a direct LDAP connection and the directory is updatable from the app server. That is LDAP support.

As far as clustering is concerned, my experience has been that if the app server doesn't support a replicated, serializable session with session failover to other cluster members, then it is not clustered. Clustering is more than distributed deployment and replicated configuration. OAS 10.1.3 has these capabilities. Previous releases did not have this capability. WLS and WebSphere had these features in early releases.

As far as IIS is concerned, I will give you that the latest releases of OAS are more supportive of IIS. Previous releases were not. WLS and WebSphere supported an IIS plugin at very early releases - 5.1 and 3.5 (respectively).

As I have said in previous posts, Siebel CRM and BI are not anything like web app servers in terms of software development and licensing. So I don't see how it applies to the original posters short-term choice of web app servers.

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<font color="red">I would like to have responded sooner, but I have to take care of the people that pay my check first. </font>

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This is but one reason why I've been mostly inactive on JDEList for several months. I also enjoy beating dead horses...oh what fun that is.

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<font color="red">I read the pdf link you posted on JVM counters & "...that's nice...". How about some counters on the other software components and hardware? How about some real graphical tools to monitor these other counters real-time? The JVM is a one component of the web app server and web service stack; it isn't the only component. Performance can be affected by many other software components: EJB cache, JDBC connection pool cache, LDAP cache, security cache, HTTP thread pool, HTTP cache, etc. There are no tools real-time (or otherwise) in base OAS to monitor these components. A graph of the JVM is not sufficient to monitor performance. By comparison, look at the Tivoli performance tools in base WebSphere. The ones you can enable real-time to monitor these activities. </font>

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Thanks for clarifying

Yes, of course I gave only one example, JVM monitoring, which is no doubt one of the most common concerns for JDEList posters' JAS clients. More often that not, these are WAS users. The other functionality you mentioned is also covered.

For the purposes of my response, I'm not concerned with whether or not this particular functionality is available in the “base product”; I'm simply concerned with the fact that it is available. Please, have a look at another document. It details additional functionality contained within the same OEM framework. Yes, it is different than the way "base" WebLogic and IBM work (as you stated; I'm going to take your word on it this time.) I will not be getting into the merits of one solution from BEA or IBM versus Oracle. I am simply responding to your statements.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oem/as_mgmt/wp_managing_oas_with_em.pdf

My hope for this post is not to win an argument; rather, I would like to see some of the regulars here begin to understand the concepts behind the Oracle Technology Foundation for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Perhaps they will be able to take from this enough knowledge to make or assist with an informed decision.

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<font color="red"> As far as LDAP is concerned, I've been there and done that. Up to and including OAS 10.1.2, there isn't direct support for Active Directory LDAP (or any other LDAP besides OID). You have to thru OID for LDAP support. We went thru the exercise of trying to get Active Directory integration with JDE 8.12. The only way it was supported was thru Oracle SSO and OID. And, to get this working you have to have a synchronization process set up between OID and Active Directory. The Oracle consultants we talked with said this was a significant project for companies with 1000+ accounts in AD. That is _NOT_ LDAP support. WebLogic and WebSphere provide for a direct LDAP connection and the directory is updatable from the app server. That is LDAP support.</font>

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I'm going to go ahead and cry "foul" on this one. You first stated concerns regarding "basic admin security, LDAP administration modules". Based on this, I can't in good conscience allow you to further qualify that with a "That is _NOT_ LDAP support" without objection. Yes, it is, it just doesn't meet up with your qualifications of what is and is not LDAP support. I reserve the right to wholly disagree with you on this.

I've been there and I'm still doing that. I've done the Oracle OID <- Active Directory integration for domains with thousands of user accounts and also multiple domains each with thousands of user accounts. My current installation is much smaller, but it works the same way, just less to 'bootstrap' and less complicated OU structure and associated map file. I've also done the Windows Native Authentication thing. None of this was very complicated to tell you the truth and I did not use any Oracle consulting. The documentation for this setup is quite good, actually, and there is a fair amount of excellent third party "real world" documentation available online. I'd be happy to share some links with anyone who may be interested.

On the other hand, if I had my druthers, I would of course prefer to bypass OID in favor of straight Active Directory support from the Oracle JAS implementation, but still use AD in conjunction with Oracle SSO with an alternate SSO server as a supported option. At this time it (native AD) is not available even with the 10.1.4.2 release, but Oracle is considering this as an option. I believe the primary reason they've not done this up to this point is that Oracle SSO and OID were developed from the ground up as a tightly integrated solution which leverages Oracle database technology. It is also a part of what is essentially Oracle's "turnkey" solution for the enterprise and/or departmental portal.

Other SSO solutions are available from Oracle which are meant for heterogeneous environments, though Oracle Denver has been somewhat late to the party for solutions such as OAM.

LDAP support can be configured directly in the JDE application, but this affects the JAS implementation in a positive way...the result is an effective "Single Sign-On" solution. The LDAP support I've mentioned includes native Active Directory. This functionality has been available since EnterpriseOne 8.11, which also happens to be the first release which eliminates the fat client as a supported user interface in favor of JAS. My opinion is this resolves some of the deficiencies, perceived or otherwise, of the Oracle SSO and OID solution. I've not done this (yet), so I can't speak to any technical challenges involved in getting it up and running. Yes, it is still a "single-sign on" solution, but not in what may now be the commonly accepted sense of of the term.

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<font color="red"> As far as clustering is concerned, my experience has been that if the app server doesn't support a replicated, serializable session with session failover to other cluster members, then it is not clustered. Clustering is more than distributed deployment and replicated configuration. OAS 10.1.3 has these capabilities. Previous releases did not have this capability. WLS and WebSphere had these features in early releases. </font>

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OAS 10.1.3 is now supported by both Tools 8.96 Update 3 (8.96.3.0) and Tools 8.97.

http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/doc_archive/pub_library/cc_home/15FEB2008_e1update896.jsp

So, in terms of speaking about the here and now, which I am and have been doing, it is irrelevant what features were or were not available or fully functional in previous releases when comparing to a product not at all supported by EnterpriseOne at this point in time. To continue down this path with more comments is to spark a completely rhetorical argument.

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<font color="red">As I have said in previous posts, Siebel CRM and BI are not anything like web app servers in terms of software development and licensing. So I don't see how it applies to the original posters short-term choice of web app servers. </font>

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My basis for using the Siebel acquisition example for comparison purposes is twofold; First, it is an example of software Oracle obtained via an acquisition which was then elevated into the "high-end" offering from Oracle, superseding the previous Oracle offering. Second, it is important to view these acquisitions from the business perspective, perhaps more so than the technology.

Siebel Business Analytics technology (I am not referring to the "Business Intelligence Applications" apps) was so much better than their incumbent offering (Oracle BI Discoverer, etc.) it made no sense to keep it either behind or on par with Discoverer from a sales and marketing perspective. The result is OBIEE. WebLogic vs. OAS, in my opinion, is a different story. Some analysts think it is all about the revenue stream for support and maintenance; others think its all about WebLogic, while others still consider it an SOA push. We should also not forget the BEA portal solution which I mentioned is the famed Plumtree Portal.

I am leaning towards agreeing with some of what you said in terms of technology being culled from both products (OAS / WebLogic) such that the next release of Oracle Fusion Middleware will be a superset of the current separately available products. BEA could also be featured. Nothing is for certain. I don't think we'll see that in the 11g time frame (11g has been in development far too long, by my estimation). Perhaps a .5 release or version 12 will start to show some of the benefits of the BEA acquisition, but I'm the first to admit this is a fools game of speculation.

Kindest regards,

Charles


P.S.

I noticed you went over three and a half years between posts (May 2003 - December 2007) with your 'jdel6654' id. Perhaps you were working on one bear of a project. ...no response necessary.

You're obviously an intelligent person, which is why I don't mind having this debate in a public forum with an "anonymous" and relatively infrequent poster, however off topic it may be, as we know the original poster was speaking to either OAS or WAS. As they say, "it is what it is" and I'm about as transparent as I can be with my opinions.

Please don't perceive my previous comment as a knock to you in terms of public versus anonymous; I am sticking my neck out with my public face on (as hard to look at as my face may be)...and each is entitled to their own opinion in this forum.

I prefer to state what I believe are facts and let whatever amount of bias I may have be accounted for by my full disclosure of personal preference and that which I am responsible for in a production environment, some of which may be directly or indirectly influenced by business needs.

Also, as far as the JD Edwards client base is concerned, OAS has the distinct advantage of being one of two supported JAS server platforms.

I'm usually for "whatever works" provided it is not too terribly expensive, cumbersome or both. I don't consider the Fusion Middleware stack to be either; in the case of OAS, I'd like to state my preference for OAS over WAS based on a number of factors which I will resolve not to list in their entirety as this post is already far too long.

I would love to continue this dialog but I think it is digressing off of the original thread. I'll elaborate more later.

With regard to the points you make in your last post. I think this sums up your post and my point:

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On the other hand, if I had my druthers, I would of course prefer to bypass OID in favor of straight Active Directory support from the Oracle JAS implementation , but still use AD in conjunction with Oracle SSO with an alternate SSO server as a supported option. At this time it (native AD) is not available , ...Oracle is considering this as an option...

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My points to Mr. Robinson have been that there are some features that have been recently lacking in OAS (eg. support for other LDAPs like Active Directory w/o OID) and therefore he might consider waiting for a future release of Fusion / OAS / WebLogic.

As you noted, I did in fact go on a tangent with regard to LDAP-supported, role-base system admin. This feature has been supported in WebLogic and WebSphere from very early on. It is now supported in OAS v. 10.1.3.

Again, prior to 10g, OAS lacked some significant features which I believe you are acknowledging. To paraphrase what you wrote on clustering:

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OAS 10.1.3 is now supported by both Tools 8.96 Update 3 (8.96.3.0) and Tools 8.97.
...
So, in terms of speaking about the here and now, which I am and have been doing, it is irrelevant what features were or were not available or fully functional in previous releases

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I think you are misinterpreting the topic of this thread. The original post was with regard to what to do about replacing a web app server "stack". Mr. Robinson asked about the relative merits of OAS and WebSphere. The thread detoured on what Mr. Robinson could do in light of recent events. My point was that there are many features supported by the current J2EE market leader's products that OAS is just now fully supporting. If these features are only now being included in OAS, isn't it presumptuous to put OAS on the same level as WebSphere and WebLogic. My advise to the original poster was to wait and see what happens with Fusion and WebLogic. If he absolutely has to (short-term) make a move to support BI then I would definitely recommend OAS. Mr. Robinson may find that an OAS conversion and/or an upgrade of WebSphere could be deferred until Fusion is complete. My experience has been that given a choice of a premature upgrade or a deferred upgrade, typical companies will defer.


With regard to:

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I noticed you went over three and a half years between posts (May 2003 - December 2007) with your 'jdel6654' id. Perhaps you were working on one bear of a project. ...no response necessary.

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AAMOF, I was working on bears of projects. But, honestly, do you really believe anything that is written in the profile info and/or sig line? Do you really believe that people on this list should believe the profile info or sig line? Do you really believe that posters on this list are limited to just 1 account? If I were a consultant-troll I might put my profile info out there, but what would that otherwise accomplish? I'm not looking for a gig. IMHO, its the quality of posts someone provides not the quantity. I offer my experience as a fellow JDE professional working with the product for an Oracle-JDE customer full-time. I can tell you that I have worked with OW/E1 since inception (B73.1) and JAS since the JRun / WebSphere 3.5 days. And, at one time I installed as a contractor for JDE. That's all that matters for the context of this discussion.

The reality is that one doesn't know anyone from anyone on the internet. I will say this, look for a scoop on JDELIST in the next couple of days. Then, you can re-think your views on identities and on "facts" vs. information.

"And that's all I'm gonna say about that..." -- Forrest Gump

BTW, since when has being busy in Denver stopped JDE from supporting new platforms / dbs / os's / JVMs /etc. RHEL Linux, OEL Linux, DB2, Oracle 10G, OAS, Windows x64. None of those really slowed Denver down.

FWIW, I am not even sure that Denver, per se, would need to do a whole lot to make this work. Sounds like a job for San Jose.

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I think you are misinterpreting the topic of this thread.

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Not really. I originally took notice to one particular comment of yours and wanted to know if you had some insider knowledge to back up your position. Really, it was nothing more than that. The real shame is that you can't easily see intent or inflection in the written word. It often must be emoted like crazy...and even then...

The conversation just detoured from there and I wanted to make sure your points had counterpoints so those who are/were reading the thread could then see both sides and judge for themselves.

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AAMOF, I was working on bears of projects. But, honestly, do you really believe anything that is written in the profile info and/or sig line? Do you really believe that people on this list should believe the profile info or sig line? Do you really believe that posters on this list are limited to just 1 account?

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Of course not, I was 'trolling'.

If when the landscape changes, I will of course re-evaluate. I like to think I'm about as open-minded as one can be when it comes to technology. If you scoop something and you're right.....BRAVO. I'll try to be the first to congratulate you for your genius.

I'm not so proud that I can't admit that I'm wrong about something if/when it is made apparent to me that I am...

Fun debate guys.

Here's my $.02. My company is currently blue stack and I will have to remain blue stack for production for the next few years only because we are on XE and it will take a few years to move off of that.

That being said, we are about to start our 8.12 project this month. For that project, I am not even considering blue stack. We will be using OAS for far more than JAS. We are also going to use the other components of the red stack, BAM, BPEL, BI for a number of processes, including interfacing to JDE, but also for other non-JDE uses. If I look at where Oracle is going with fusion, it just doesn't make sense to go against the stream. They are developing Fusion for OAS, not WAS. I'm not going to waste any calories on WAS. Now that they have purchased BEA, I'm sure they'll use some of their developers and patented processes to improve OAS, but I doubt they will keep that product around forever.

As a shameless plug, I had the pleasure today of helping to edit an excellent article comparing the red stack against the blue stack. This is an article that I wanted to write for years, but did not have the hands on experience to write. I recommended to the editorial board of that magazine that this upcoming article is worthy of being the cover article.

Gregg

totally off topic here Greg but weren't you guys on Oracle DB, then migrated to SQL Server? Now are you going back to big Red?

Are you dumping WAS for OAS for any particular reason or did the JDE Sales team feed you the Kool-Aid?

Why not swim up river?

On a really curious note what are you guys gonna do with Catch Weight/Dual Unit of Measure? Try and Migrate to the 8.12 implementation or try and keep what you have? I worked with the company that developed this originally and have a few of these upgrades coming up.

Colin

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totally off topic here Greg but weren't you guys on Oracle DB, then migrated to SQL Server? Now are you going back to big Red?

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Yes - we started out on Oracle, then switched over to SQL. We are going to stay on SQL, but will migrate that to SQL 2005.

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Are you dumping WAS for OAS for any particular reason or did the JDE Sales team feed you the Kool-Aid?

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Our production instances in North America and Asia will upgrade WAS from WAS 4 to WAS 6. Those instances are currently on XE and will be there for a while. We will be doing a MAJOR overhaul of our ERP strategy. All of our XE instances will be moving to 8.12 (North America, Western Europe, Italy, Germany, South America, and three instances for Asia). We have one small division on SAP coming over to 8.12. That's just the tip of the iceburg. We'll be in conversion mode for at least four or five years.

As part of that, we use Webmethods for a lot of interfaces, both to and from JDE and to and from other systems. We will be converting those interfaces over to the Fusion middleware stack. The Fusion middleware stack is built on a foundation of OAS. If I have to support OAS for that, then what's the point of also supporting Websphere for 8.12? Yea, they said that they will support Websphere for Fusion, but it's going to be clunky. I'd rather have an integrated system. Less throats to choke. Right now, WAS is a tiny piece of our overall system. I'd rather focus on one application server for the new technologies rather than two.


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Why not swim up river

On a really curious note what are you guys gonna do with Catch Weight/Dual Unit of Measure? Try and Migrate to the 8.12 implementation or try and keep what you have? I worked with the company that developed this originally and have a few of these upgrades coming up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't have a clue what Catch Weight/Dual Measure is or if we use it. If we do use it, that will be our developers issue to figure out. I have enough to manage with the CNC stuff.

Gregg

Time will tell what happens, but I was wrong about OAS. It isn't going away, of course, but they are definitely featuring WebLogic. Hey, it is even available as a download on the OTN. Woohoo.

They're telling customers they won't be forced to migrate to WebLogic (especially eBusiness Suite customers....)

What does this mean for JDE on OAS? The Red Stack? Who knows how soon those plans (announced today) will materialize into something meaningful for <font color="red"> ORACLE </font> JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers.

Bravo's are in order as soon as Denver announces the WebLogic port. This really doesn't effect me all that much over the next two and a half, three years. Before that I'll probably have to reevaluate our situation.

Charles,

I have a little bit of inside track info. What oracle call OAS is bits and pieces acquired or licensed and then modified. My source tells me that Oracle is looking to replace the OC4J component of OAS with weblogic. That integration will be part of OAS 11g.

As for the blue stack, I can see the handrighting on the wall for the blue stack. If you look under the covers of server manager for 8.12, it is an OC4J application running on OAS. Slowly but surely, the blue stack is getting edged out. For my $.02 worth, since I'm an admin on both and have had several training classes in both websphere and OAS, I think OAS is a more robust product.

Gregg

Look at page 52:

http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/docs/oracle-middleware-strategy-briefing-072008.pdf


WebLogic:
Strategic Java EE 5.0 Application Server –
Features integrated from OC4J

OAS (OC4J):
"Key Features integrated with WebLogic
Server with seamless migration"

Reads like a convergence, but still separate products, and interesting that OC4J features will be integrated with WebLogic. Not exactly a rip and replace of OC4J.