Blogging Techstacks

Redhat vs. SpringSource: It Ain't Over!

Just when we thought that the great SpringSource vs. Everyone brawl had died down, Redhat returns with a new webinar taking aim directly at SpringSource and "other proprietary frameworks" titled: Java EE 6 and CDI: Moving away from the clutter of Spring and other frameworks.  There isn't much time to register as the webinar is on October 14, 2010 at 12 PM ET.

The abstract of the event is sure to ignite a fire in the hearts of Spring fans and advocates everywhere:  

"Java EE 6 standards and technologies, such as JSR 299 - Contexts & Dependency Injection (CDI), significantly reduce the complexity of earlier versions of J2EE.  Now, using Java EE can be even simpler and take much less time than using proprietary legacy frameworks such as Spring Framework."

Yes, not only is Spring proprietary but is a legacy technology as well!  Oh snap!

Is no one safe from SpringSource?

SpringSource has created a new site, TomcatExpert dedicated to "improving the adoption of tomcat in the enterprise".  Apparently, they must have noticed the wild success of this blog and were inspired to create their own web site dedicated to stealing my "tens" of weekly visitors tomcat in production.  And I can't say I blame them.  Outside of this blog, there aren't that many sites out there where an administrator can go to find information on how to disable ciphers in tomcat, change ports in jboss, or connecting IIS with tomcat.

Many of you reading this post might be thinking, "Well, Chris, these tomcat posts are OK but when I visit techstacks.com,  the combination of 'tomcat' and 'expert' doesn't occur in my mind.  You're a bit full of yourself, eh?"  Although my near-perfect bounce rates and low average time on site values seem to confirm this, let's compare this blog to the new TomcatExpert site:

1. Both blog.techstacks.com and www.tomcatexpert.com are filled with posts containing questionable grammar and edits.
2. Both blog.techstacks.com and www.tomcatexpert.com really like SpringSource.
3. Both sites talk about how great tomcat is while simultaneously running on platforms that do not utilize tomcat. (techstacks == TypePad, tomcatexpert == Drupal).
4. Both TomcatExpert and my sister-site Techstacks Tools currently contain "coming soon" submit feedback "links".  ( Theirs. (just above the "The Blog" link)  Mine. (last paragraph) )

See? We are not so different! 

So, now I am at a bit of a crossroads.  What to do?  I realize it's an uphill battle.  Take a look again at their fetching design.  So clean!  So easy to read!   Mere hours after official launch, TomcatExpert has 5 times as many followers on twitter.  I'm #106!  (editor's note:  D'oh!).  (However, I do wonder how many of the SpringSource employees following TomcatExpert on Twitter were "encouraged" by email from "The Management" to do so.)  If anyone from SpringSource is reading this, I triple dare you to follow me!

Yes, I could pull a RedHat and come out with a retaliatory series of 'one' blog post on how I plan on dealing with SpringSource encroaching on my turf but for now I'll simply watch and wait and plan for a blistering counter-attack.  You're on notice, SpringSource!

Mulesoft Takes on SpringSource with Tcat Server and Cloudcat

MuleSoft, makers of the popular Mule ESB, have entered the enterprise tomcat wars currently being waged by Redhat and SpringSource by introducing Tcat Server and Cloudcat.

Tcat Server is an enterprise version of Tomcat.  What that actually means will be the scope of a separate post after I've had a chance to download it and play with it a little.  What it looks like, based on reading the product literature on the web site is a vendor-supported tomcat implementation with a custom Tomcat Management console.  The console apparently can manage not only the box that Tcat server runs on but remote tomcat servers as well running another Tcat server instance or an ASF supplied tomcat 5.5 or tomcat 6.0 instance.

Cloudcat is a version of Tcat Server packaged as an image for deployment into popular cloud services from Amazon and GoGrid.  It can be managed from the same Tcat Server console.

Perhaps a tcserver vs. Tcat Server vs jboss web comparison is in my near future!