The J2EE 1.4-compliant product has IBM’s Cloudscape small footprint relational database, full Eclipse web tools support, plus a simplified run time console in a compact 60MB download package.
WebSphere Community Edition is based on the Apache Geronimo Project, which was originally led by Gluecode before being acquired by IBM.
As part of the Geronimo project, IBM contributed the Cloudscape embedded Java database to the Apache project, which has renamed it Derby. Recently, IBM added a run time management console to Apache as well.
Like JBoss, the best-known open source J2EE appserver, WebSphere Community Edition is available free for download, or with paid business day or 24 x 7 support subscriptions.
In a change to original plans, support is being priced per server rather than per CPU, so customers won’t pay penalties for new multi-core architectures.
As initial release, WebSphere Community Edition still has a ways to go before it gets technology parity with JBoss. For instance, the product does not yet support clustering, and although it has drivers for Oracle and SQL Server external databases, ironically, IBM’s DB2 is not yet one of them.
Although WebSphere community Edition, a.k.a., Apache Geronomi, has a relatively late start in the open source appserver sphere, IBM is bullish on developing the constituency. We’re seeing open and vibrant community building around Geronimo right now
Also, IBM has yet to work on migration tools for Community Edition subscribers that want to graduate to the real WebSphere. We will be working toward [determining] how do we exploit Geronimo technology within WebSphere itself, said Scott Cosby, IBM’s Gluecode Transition Executive.
