Product Line Overview

Sun ONE Application Server 7 is a J2EE 1.3 specification-compatible application server which also supports emerging Java Web Services standards as well as standard HTTP server programming facilities. Three editions of the application server are offered to suit a variety of needs for both production and development environments:

• Platform Edition

• Standard Edition

• Enterprise Edition

Platform Edition

Platform Edition forms the core of the Sun ONE Application Server 7 product line. This free-for-production-use product offers a high-performance, small-footprint J2EE 1.3 specification-compatible runtime environment that is ideally suited for basic operational deployments, as well as for embedding in third-party applications. Web-services ready, the Platform Edition includes built-in technologies proven by the Sun ONE Web Server and Sun ONE Messge Queue products.

Platform Edition deployments are limited to single application server instances (i.e. single virtual machines for the Java platform ("Java virtual machine" or "JVM^TM")). Multi-tier deployment topologies are supported by the Platform edition, but the web server tier proxy does not perform load balancing. In Platform Edition, administrative utilities are limited to local clients only.

Platform Edition is integrated into Solaris 9.

Standard Edition

This is the edition that is the focus of this Getting Started Guide. The Standard Edition layers enhanced, remote-management capabilities on top of the Platform Edition. Enhanced management capabilities, remote command-line, and web-based administration are all included as part of the Standard Edition. This edition also includes the ability to partition web application traffic through a web server tier proxy. Standard Edition supports configuration of multiple application server instances (JVMs) per machine.

Enterprise Edition

Enterprise Edition enhances the core application server platform with greater high availability, load balancing and clustering capabilities suited for the most demanding J2EE-based application deployments. The management capabilities of the Standard Edition are extended in Enterprise Edition to account for multi-instance and multi-machine deployments.

Clustering support includes easy-to-configure groups of cloned application server instances to which client requests can be load balanced. Both external load balancers and load balancing web tier-based proxies are supported by this edition. HTTP session, stateful session bean instance and Java Message Service (JMS) resource failover are included in the Enterprise Edition. The patented "Always On" highly available database technology forms the basis for the HA persistence store in the Enterprise Edition.

For more product information, see the Sun ONE Application Server page on the Sun Microsystems web site.