When anyone asks me for help developing Web applications I usually say, "That's easy," or "It's really simple." The last time I responded that way I was told, "Everything is easy for you." The fact is, I've been developing C/S applications for over 10 years and Web applications for four (when I started my own ISP). Now that the industry is moving to distributed development, I have the necessary skill set to understand relational databases, objects and components, Web servers and HTML, CGI, page servers, servlets, JSP, Applets, COM and more. While I learned all these moving parts, many developers were looking for a solution that integrated all these parts into one development tool.

Some of the competition in the market claim they have the only integrated distributed solution (an oxymoron in itself) with the development environment, Web server and application server. By integrating all the parts into one tool they're attempting to shield the developer from the complexity of all the moving parts. In my opinion they've created a proprietary solution that doesn't offer the best Web server, application server or development tool.

To leverage the best-of-breed and use an open solution, you should learn the various parts. This allows you to integrate the best tools for the problem at hand. IS shops have already selected various parts, such as a Web server, so you need to be able to develop applications using any Web server. This is the main reason I develop applications using EAServer. It serves up components, which is what an application server should be doing. While many vendors are rushing to develop a complete solution, developers are looking for an open solution that can be leveraged from any language, tool and platform.

To make my point, I'll look at JavaServer Pages. Several vendors (including Sybase) are integrating JSP into their application servers. Why? JSP is invoked from the Web server, (i.e., an HTTP request). Yes, I want to be able to access a Jaguar component from JSP, but in my opinion JSP has nothing to do with an application server. What I want is an open JSP engine that'll run with many Web servers on many platforms for example, JRun by Allaire or Sun's JSP engine.

I currently develop projects using a JSP engine and Jaguar. Personally, I don't need a JSP engine bundled into my application server. I'm excited to see JSP added to EAServer for those developers who've never given it a try. This feature will introduce them to a great way to make their code more open. Sybase should extend JSP to include tags for talking to Jaguar. This would be value added and a point of difference between Sybase's JSP engine and those of other vendors. Why are vendors adding JSP to their application servers without enhancing the JSP engine? It's a marketing feature that sells software.

If you don't take the time to learn and understand the various parts, you'll be influenced by marketing and make uninformed decisions when developing your distributed application.

My company, PowerTeam, develops with Sybase EAServer. It has many great features that are open and allow us to develop anything we need to; it has never limited us. Jaguar can be accessed from C/S or the Web, Java, C/C++ and PowerBuilder. We write components in Java, C/C++ and PowerBuilder, and can leverage features such as connection cache, security, object life cycle, scalability and more.

I suggest you take the time to learn the moving parts. In addition to improving the outcome of your projects, it'll also increase your skill set and allow you to move easily between tools.