rent crop of static Web-server products, preventing them from functioning as -- or from quickly evolving into -- robust and optimized applications servers.
For this report, we
tested four
Web applications servers, examining three on Windows NT and one on Unix. Included were Lotus Development's Lotus Domino Server 4.5a for Windows NT, Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) 3.0 for Windows NT 4.0, and Netscape Communications' Netscape Enterprise Server 2.01, for both Windows NT and Unix. Each vendor has its own agenda: Lotus wants to leverage its dominance in the groupware/middleware market and expose the functionality of its Notes product to the Web; Microsoft wants to sell OSes and induce users to move to the Windows NT S
erver platform; and Netscape wants to continue to dominate the Web-server market by aggressively pushing platform-independent technologies and bringing innovative new products to market.
Product roundups would be easier to do if all the vendors could agree to a single release date. But unfortunately, Netscape's Enterprise Server 3.0 upgrade and Oracle's Web Application Server (WAS) 3.0 missed our deadline. See the sidebar"These Servers Missed the Bus" for more about how these products will affect the category.
The Web App Story
You need a lot of types of support to publish a Web application -- to name a few, support for Internet protocols, data/object store services, and groupware capabilities, such as calendaring and group scheduling. The servers we tested include most of the
important features
, either as a standard part of the package or as options. The most important ones for Web applications servers are HTTP support, a database server, messaging services, and a f
ull-text search engine.
All three vendors support HTTP in their products, but only Domino includes database and messaging services as standard. IIS and Enterprise Server require optional or third-party database and messaging services; only Enterprise Server supports the IMAP e-mail standard.
Server vendors are choosing either depth of OS support -- like Microsoft, whose IIS runs only on Windows NT 4.0 -- or breadth of support, as Netscape and Lotus do. Both Enterprise Server and Domino run on various flavors of Unix, as well as NT 3.51 and 4.0; Domino even runs under OS/2.
Performance is obviously an important consideration when you're looking to distribute applications in an enterprise environment. One way to boost performance is to add CPU processing power. While this used to mean upgrading the server CPU to a faster processor, today you can add more processors on an as-needed basis via symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). All these Web servers support SMP, although some machines do it better
than others. In addition, pricing is an issue in terms of SMP support. Netscape and Lotus both charge for SMP versions of their products; Microsoft does not.
As Tiers Go By
When a single server handles hundreds or thousands of users, server failure is not an option. But maintaining two or more identical servers solely for backup can be costly. Thus, extending the client/server model to the Internet requires some reworking to make it less costly and more fault tolerant.
By extending the client/server model to a multitiered scenario, you distribute services that were previously handled by only one server to many servers. The additional servers are not duplicates of the first, but rather alternate service handlers. A simple example is using one server for database services and another for Web services.
One exciting development resulting from this move to multitiered computing is the concept of agents, automated applets governed by business-process rules. In a work-flow model, an agent
can be designed to notify a member of a workgroup that a document is ready for his or her review only after another member of the workgroup has finished reviewing it. Events such as document modification and document creation act as triggers to start an agent; the agent then automatically conducts a specified action when the trigger occurs.
Agents are relatively old hat, but creating agents in different programming languages to run on different platforms is new. Domino supports agents in the current version, but not CORBA, while Enterprise Server supports agents in version 3.0. With Microsoft IIS you can write your own agents using embedded Visual Basic commands in an Active Server Page, but as yet there is no agent management functionality as it exists in Lotus Domino Server.
Webifying Apps
All three vendors offer slick applications development tools. Netscape's LiveWire and LiveWire Pro, combined with Netscape Enterprise Server's support for Java and JavaScript, set the stage for the cu
rrent momentum to turn the Web into the world's largest development platform.
Lotus's dynamic site-creation assistant, Domino.Action, allows you to create sites with business-collaborative environments by merely filling in prompted fields. Web pages that act as white-paper repositories and threaded discussions virtually create themselves. On the downside, however, more complex Domino.Action sites can take a long time to compile. Microsoft's Active Server Pages up the ante on this front by embedding compile-free Visual Basic commands inside HTML tags.
Applications require databases, and Web applications are no exception. Netscape's database packaging will soon change, but currently LiveWire Pro (which includes Informix's database server) is a $695 option. IIS requires Microsoft SQL Server (single-server license, $849) to add industrial-strength database services to the Web server. Domino uses Lotus Notes as its database server. Notes is nonrelational but provides a rich content store for unstructur
ed information, such as word processing documents and multimedia files. All the servers we tested connect to traditional databases via ODBC.
Not all data fits into a traditional database, so these servers provide full-text indexing that enables you to retrieve information not easily stored in the orderly row-and-column format of database tables. Such information includes data in press releases and product brochures.
Domino supports the most document formats and optionally allows you to include mail in the search, which can span multiple Notes databases as well. Index Server, which comes bundled with IIS, allows indexed searches of HTML, text, and Microsoft Office documents; you can add other formats with Microsoft's filter Software Development Kit. Enterprise Server currently supports only HTML and text and does not allow index updates based on modified files the way the indexing functions in the other servers do.
All three vendors are producing broadcasting components for the distribution o
f information in real time and on demand. Microsoft's NetShow offers streaming and on-demand audio and video, as well as file broadcasting using HTTP. It comes bundled with IIS at no extra charge. Lotus's Domino.Broadcast offers distribution of streaming text and OLE objects via PointCast for an additional $1295, with a video service add-on planned for release by the end of the year. Netscape's Media Server currently provides streaming audio.
No Web applications server can be without site-creation and management tools. Lotus's Domino.Action, Microsoft's FrontPage and FrontPage Server extensions, and Netscape's Navigator Gold all create Web sites quickly and simply. While not as graphical as FrontPage, Domino.Action easily sets up collaborative Web environments that support threaded discussions and document libraries.
Lotus Domino Server 4.5a
Multitiered infrastructure and groupware services make Lotus Domino Server an attractive choice for a Web applications server. Domino uses the rich L
otus Notes content data store, provides middleware services to handle file-format incompatibilities, works on multiple platforms, and offers an upgrade path to fault tolerance and load balancing. This rich features base takes its toll on performance, however, and not enough of the services support open Internet standards, but Lotus plans to extend Domino's capabilities dramatically in this regard by the end of the year.
Workgroup services include directory, group scheduling, document library, work flow, forum, and news, all of which aid collaboration among a company's employees. Domino offers the greatest support of these functions without add-ons, but taking full advantage of these services now requires a Notes client, such as Notes Desktop ($69 per client). Weblicator, a $29 browser plug-in, replicates site content into a client-side Notes database for off-line browsing with some Notes services.
Domino is the only product we tested to extend Microsoft's OLE to Macintosh clients as well as to Win
dows clients, and it's also the only one to run under OS/2 -- not surprising, given IBM's ownership of Lotus. Lotus Domino Server is the current hands-down winner for creating and publishing a Web site with real collaborative business-process applications. Domino's rich feature set makes it a less attractive option for simple static content publishing, however.
Microsoft Internet Information Server 3.0
Although IIS lacks the object-store, messaging, and collaborative-computing components that Domino offers out of the box, it's well integrated with the NT Server OS. IIS inherits all the applicable NT OS services, but of course it runs only under NT. But Microsoft is good at diverting attention from IIS's weaknesses by giving away products -- and Active Server Pages, Index Server, NetShow, and FrontPage are impressive giveaways. To provide real industrial-strength database services, IIS requires Microsoft SQL server.
In addition to being an impressively bundled package, IIS was the fastest
of the servers that we tested. These are two compelling reasons to go where Microsoft wants you to go today.
Netscape Enterprise Server 2.01
Enterprise Server has a lot going for it as a static Web server, but for Web applications you're likely to prefer the new technologies that are coming in version 3.0. The list is long (see the sidebar "These Servers Missed the Bus") and includes improved distributed content management, database support, intelligent agents, LDAP, and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA).
All we can say at this point is that Enterprise Server 3.0 looks good on paper. Despite being a bit long in the tooth, Enterprise Server 2.01 performed respectably against its newer competitors.
A Competitive Market
When looking at the Web as a launchpad for multitiered computing, the bad news is this: As of this writing (early April), no one offers a product that addresses all aspects of the obstacles that prevent you from offering Web application services
in a robust, transparent, optimized, and cost-effective manner. The good news is that competition is spurring vendors to fill in their technology gaps at a stunning pace. Based on what we've seen in current shipping and beta products, soon companies of all sizes will be able to use Web sites as collaborative computing environments.
Web-based collaborative computing still requires technology and infrastructure enhancements to solve real business problems. However, a highly competitive market should continue to churn out better products at lower prices.
Evaluations in this report represent the judgment of BYTE editors, based in part on extensive tests conducted by NSTL, Inc., as documented in a recent issue of its monthly Software Digest. To purchase a copy of that report, with NSTL's own evaluations and data, contact NSTL at 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428; 610-941-9600; fax 610-941-9950; on the Internet, editors@nstl.com. For a subscription,
Product Information
Lotus Domino Server 4.5a...............................$995 (for Windows NT or Unix)
Lotus Development Corp.
Cambridge, MA
Phone: 800-343-5414
Phone: 617-577-8500
Fax: 617-693-0968
Internet:
http://www.lotus.com
Enter 1043 on Inquiry Card.
Web Applications at Your Service
