Does anyone have experience in using IBM software? Specifically Websphere? I'm trying to figure out exactly what it does and if it's useful.

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>and don't you dare link me to the IBM webpage, I've read their descriptions and still don't have a clue. I run the students.ist(.psu.edu) server and IBM may be giving us a new server. The guy's asking what kind of sofware we want and mentioned WebSphere but I don't know if we need it or even what it does.</div>

[ManaMan]

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>I use WSAD (WebSphere Application Developer) everyday at my job... It's an IDE for Java. We use Websphere Application Server to run the applications that we create... I'm no expert (well maybe with WSAD) but I'll answer any questions you might have.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>Do you think it's something a student run/used server could/would use?</div>

[ManaMan]

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Only if you're running Java Apps.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>well...IST does teach java but we don't put them on the web...would this enable students to do so?</div>

[ManaMan]

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Yes, but I think it'd probably be overkill for student projects. If you're just talking about like applets, servlets, & JSP, you can probably just use a freeware product like Tomcat.</div>

[Ishamael]

<div style='font: 14pt "Sans Serif"; text-align: justify; padding: 0% 15% 0% 15%; '>If they give it to you, you may as well take it. Never used it, but I hear it's a good product...</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Yeah, I've seen Tomcat used quite a bit. Works pretty well.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>we have a Tomcat server running right now for this weird project that is getting moved off...but neither of us knows how to admin it (Tomcat)</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/">Tomcat home page</a>

Sounds like you don't know how to admin Websphere, either, and I'm sure that's a tougher thing to learn than Tomcat. The Apache guys are good with ease of use and well-written documentation.</div>