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September 1, 2006

The End of JRun?


Has Adobe JRun finally gone up to software heaven (if you believe in that sort of stuff) to party with Generator and Spectra? Well, there's no definitive statement from Adobe, but this very quietly posted TechNote about the JRun 4.5 Beta status sure makes it sound that way. This sentence in particular is ominous:

Next steps for JRun and where it fits in the product calendar continue to be under discussion at the Product Manager level and such evaluation will be communicated to customers as soon as it becomes available.

I've felt for a few years now that JRun should have been end-of-life'd (is that even English?) as a standalone product. Frankly, it never has been terribly well supported (community-wise), and there was even one time where I called in a web connector bug and the engineer who literally wrote the code didn't understand what her code was doing!

I don't think it should be adandoned entirely though. Rather, I feel that any fixes and/or enhancements should be in the context of making complementary server products such as Adobe ColdFusion MX, Adobe LiveCycle, and Adobe Flex Data Services operate better.

If this is the end of the road for JRun, so long, and thanks. It's been a good (and sometimes frustrating) experience!

Posted By Dave on September 1, 2006 at 8:45 AM
Related Categories: ColdFusion, Flex, Technology, Adobe
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Dave Ross's Gravatar Honestly - they should have ditched it long ago for Tomcat or similar lightweight ASF-compatible-licensed servlet container.

If JEE features are needed, there's always Geronimo, Glassfish, or JBoss.
# Posted By Dave Ross on 9/1/06 at 9:38 AM
Dave Carabetta's Gravatar Hey Dave. I definitely agree that an official move to Tomcat would have been nice. But I wonder if it would be too difficult for most customers to have to deal with manually adding in extra features. A lot of the event gateways would not work on Tomcat by default, and by asking customers to go get a plugin and install that, it would likely kill EGs as viable CF features.

I do hope that the talent on the JRun teams gets brought over to the ColdFusion/LiveCyle/FDS teams though.
# Posted By Dave Carabetta on 9/1/06 at 10:12 AM
Derek P.'s Gravatar maybe if they do we will see a .NET framework-based CF8?

one can dream :)
# Posted By Derek P. on 9/1/06 at 11:07 AM
Toby R's Gravatar > maybe if they do we will see a .NET
> framework-based CF8?

> one can dream :)

Yeah, and one can also have nightmares, too. With all respects to Bluedragon, I REALLY don't want to see a .NET-based Coldfusion.

For one thing, that either means that they have to manage two implementations of the Coldfusion engine (and so much of how it currently runs is based on Java that they would have to literally rewrite it from the ground up) or give up on being truly multi-platform.

All existing CF applications that in any way made calls to Java would have to be refactored.

I know some people really, really, really love Microsoft so much, but for the rest of us, why mess with a platform combo (CF on Java) that works so well?
# Posted By Toby R on 9/1/06 at 12:32 PM
Alex Hubner's Gravatar Hmmm... Interesting. Remember what Matt Liotta said long time ago (2003)?

Signs point to Macromedia dropping JRun from product line
http://www.newsforge.com/business/03/08/06/1413257...

If Jrun will be discontinued, what will happen to CF enginee? It will continue to be shiped with the regular JRun version (even in the Standard edition) and this version will continue to be improved? I don't think so. What about 64bit support and J2EE 1.4 (jrun is a J2EE 1.3 compliance)? If Adobe retires JRun, CF will be ported to a different java container (I don't think Adobe will kill CF). Will be TomCat? Will be JBoss? Will be an open or proprietary product? Nobody knows, but those on the Scorpio beta program has a clue.
# Posted By Alex Hubner on 9/1/06 at 3:19 PM
Alan's Gravatar Funny thing happened on the way to post this comment, I got this error message -

Server Error
The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request.

Could not connect to JRun Server.

Hmmmm.
# Posted By Alan on 9/1/06 at 4:47 PM
Damon Cooper's Gravatar I believe CF will likely continue to be powered by JRun for many years to come, and JRun will continue to be maintained even longer, keeping fresh with the latest operating systems, web servers, 64-bit and XXX-bit VMs, DB's, etc.

Damon
# Posted By Damon Cooper on 9/2/06 at 1:04 PM
Dave Carabetta's Gravatar Hey Damon. As I suggested in the entry, I definitely don't see JRun going away altogether. There's too many good things about it, especially in the area of instance monitoring from which I know ColdFusion 8 will benefit, to just outright kill it. I just think it's about time that JRun as a standalone product said its goodbyes. That being said, I'm glad to see an official note of support for JRun in the context of ColdFusion.
# Posted By Dave Carabetta on 9/3/06 at 11:53 AM
pan69's Gravatar I'm just starting out with using J2EE and comming from a Flash/ActionScript programming background, I must say that JRun is a true gift! Yes, it may have its problems at times and the manuals that come with it aren't always that clear, but I think JRun is one hell of a product! The fact that Flash Remoting comes pre-installed with every new server you create within JRun is just fanatasic. I don't have any need for ColdFusion but I do want the possibility for my Flash apps to connect to a J2EE server.

I'm truely waiting for the next release of JRun and I hope it will be supported for many years to come!
# Posted By pan69 on 9/5/06 at 7:24 PM
Bob's Gravatar Can I add: http://www.adobe.com/products/jrun/proven/
# Posted By Bob on 9/11/06 at 12:01 AM
Cliff Meyers's Gravatar While I don't doubt that JRun is a servicable J2EE server, it's been relegated to a small blip on the radar:

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/09/21/onja...

""
...JRun has fallen to three percent, so there seems to be more standardization on the major players.
""

I just don't see Adobe providing any value with JRun in what's quickly becoming a commoditized market. I think their best bet is to certify all of their software on JBoss/Tomcat and put JRun on the path towards EOL. I suspect that one of the reasons CF has had a hard time winning over Java developers is that there still isn't a supported open-source deployment option. Most Java teams scoff at JRun and are left only with high-priced containers from BEA, IBM or Oracle as the remaining deployment options. FDS and Livecycle both run on JBoss so I think we'll see them move CF in that direction eventually.
# Posted By Cliff Meyers on 9/17/06 at 2:49 AM
pan69's Gravatar To that survey 988 people responded, so that means that about 30 of them are using JRun. Eventhough I don't think that survey represents anything, I do think however that 3% is a lot of JRun users for a, quite meaningless, survey like that.
# Posted By pan69 on 9/29/06 at 2:09 AM
green evil's Gravatar I would pay zero attention to a customer list like the one posted on the Adobe site. JRun has been on the market for 10 years - and prior to the dot bomb crash there were a lot of toe dippers into Java tech.

I'd like to see how many of those customers bought JRun post 2004 or so.
# Posted By green evil on 11/9/06 at 5:57 PM
greenevil's Gravatar Adobe has announced that there will be no new feature development, and has discontinued gold level support contracts.

He's dead, Jim.
# Posted By greenevil on 11/14/07 at 4:24 PM
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