Will Oracle retire 10gAS in favor of WebLogic?

Question

Oracle purchased BEA and their WebLogic suite of tools. They still have a competing product in their own 10gAS Application Server. Both are Java EE, enterprise grade, servers. While it make take some time due to maintenance agreements, it would be unusual for them to continue to produce two products within the same architectural space. So...

1. Will they retire their previous application server in favor of WebLogic?
2. Is WebLogic the one that will be retired?
3. How long of a process is this likely to be? Years?

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What have they done with PeopleSoft vs. Oracle Applications? Likely the same pattern will be followed.

Answer 1

You can go through a (rather long) PDF strategy briefing from Oracle. The key slide, though, is probably #48. Oracle has put BEA Weblogic on the "Strategic Products" list and the Oracle Application Server on the "Continue and Converge" list. So Oracle has indicated that the Oracle App Server will be going away (in marketing-ese that it will be converged with the BEA products) and that BEA Weblogic is the strategic direction going forward.

As to question 3, I'm sure it'll be at least a few years depending on your definition of "retired".

Answer 2

Yes. They have already announced their position. OC4J/Orion will continue to be supported however the weblogic release is the future of the platform.

Answer 3

In Oracle terms, the product "Oracle Application Server" contains much more than just the J2EE server. One component is the J2EE server, which used to be OC4J. Oracle has announced that their new strategic J2EE server is WebLogic.

There will therefore still be a product called "Oracle Application Server", but from version 11g onwards, the J2EE server will be WebLogic.

Answer 4

Oracle will release a 11g version oc4j, but after that Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS) will be the preferred Java EE server. WLS is much better with clustering and has a lot of JMS / JDBC options.

Answer 5

Yes, that is a fact. Oracle explained it in the product road map earlier in this year. The "new" product is called Oracle Weblogic Server, and that's what all sales men should offer to new customers from now on. The PDF file posted by Justin shows that.

Take a look to Oracle Weblogic 10g :S :S alt text http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/2200/oracleweblogic10guk4.png

Answer 6

As you say, it would be unusual for them to maintain two products within the same architectural space. I don't know Java application servers, but given the climate of financial markets, and that it would probably take lots of money to maintain two such application servers, I would say it's a foregone conclusion that one of the products will be cut, and sooner rather than later at that (as soon as the cost of settling breach of maintenance contracts falls below what it costs to maintain the outgoing product). As for which one will go, my bet will be on WebLogic because it "wasn't invented here"...