Macromedia JRun 4 review

I installed JRun on Windows, where it can optionally run as a Windows service. Launching the program opens a graphical control application where you can start and stop JRun servers. A single server can run multiple apps, and each JRun server runs its own JVM (Java Virtual Machine), allowing apps or groups of apps to be isolated from each other. JRun has its own all-Java web server for testing, or it can be connected to any of the popular web servers including Apache and Microsoft IIS.

The JRun Management Console is the main configuration tool. In addition, some functions can be carried out from the command line, the JMX interface mentioned above, or an EJB deployment Wizard. This assists with creating and editing deployment descriptors, packaging EJBs into JAR (Java ARchive) files and deploying them to JRun. If you have JBuilder or Forte, this tool can be integrated into the IDE. JRun also supports XDoclet, which allows developers to embed descriptor meta data into EJB code as Javadoc tags, greatly simplifying the deployment process.

JRun is a well-specified product and, given the inherent complexity of J2EE application servers, almost easy to use. It's modestly priced and integrates well with Macromedia's other products, including Dreamweaver MX for JSP authoring. Enterprise customers will want to see its robustness under stress proven before committing to JRun deployments, but first impressions are encouraging.

Author: Tim Anderson