IBM Websphere Community Server Edition

So for the past few weeks I have been programming against IBM’s Websphere using their Rational Application Developer. It has been interesting getting to know how things work in the IBM world and expanding the Java knowledge. IBM’s RAD (Rational Application Developer) offers an extension of Eclipse and adds some pretty awesome tools. It also includes the latest server adapter for IBM Websphere 6.1. So I was wanting to test a few things at home and get some webservices going.

The problem is that I didn’t had RAD or Websphere. I was able to download the WTP version of Eclipse pretty quickly. I then needed a application server. I don’t like the Sun Application Server as I feel this too bloated. I have worked with both Apache and Websphere in the past so I thought I would stick with these. I had a look around and remembered that IBM offers a free version of Websphere.

IBM Websphere Community Edition is a free download which is available from the IBM site.

“WebSphere® Application Server Community Edition is a free J2EE™ server for building and managing Java™ applications”

It harnesses the latest innovations from the open-source community and provides a readily accessible and flexible foundation for building Java applications. It is actually pretty neat IBM offering a free version of Websphere. Its based on Apache’s Geronimo. To help IBM has developed a server adapter for Eclipse. You can grab this by just adding a new remote site into Eclipse.

All the features of the Community Edition can be found here: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/community/features/?S_CMP=rnav. If you want to know how different the community edition is to the other editions? Check it out here: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/was/hmc.html. There is a good production documentation and you even get a free 30 days support.

So if you are looking for a good application server which has good manageability and support and is free! Head over and check it out: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/info1/websphere/index.jsp?tab=landings/was-ce.