BEA weblogic server vs. Oracle iAS 9

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Good day, everybody.
Time for a question from my side.

We are running BEA weblogic server vers. 5.1
on a cluster of two N4000 with Oracle databases
( vers. 8.1.7.4 ).

According to Oracle it should be the same risk
upgrading to BEA Weblogic Server vers. 7 or transfer to Oracle iAS 9.

I would like to hear your opinion, what you would prefer.

Stay with BEA and upgrade ?

Transfer to Oracle iAS ?

The problem is the downtime / system outage.
This system is very critical.
Pls let me know.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[SteveKirby · Accepted solution]

Baseed on what you described my plan would be:

Get ad additional server. Install the new versions on that server. Test.

When everything works after debugging etc..

Bring down one half of the cluster. Install the tested application stack. And bring it up. Test for a little bit. Then flip over to the new server. and upgrade the 2nd server in the cluster.

From a DB/ Sys Admin standpoint it is equally easy/hard to do the conversion.
Going to Oracle iAS may cost more money in licensing.
The upgrade, even for BEA, is so significant that you will need to do some good testing of the code you have.

Based on what you have described I would go BEA because you already have it and know it. Smaller learning curve. Cheaper. And less likly to get any issues with difference between how BEA and iAS might have implemented Java and scripting.

Steve

[Christopher Caldwell]

For well written apps, I've found the different apps servers to be fairly transparent from a porting standpoint.

IMHO, the real question is about operability, features, performance of the app server (BEA or Oracle) itself. Is there something about the Oracle App Server that's compelling you to make a change?

We have some cases where we run the same app against two different app servers, so if you do decide to migrate, the advice about running both is good.

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Thanks