The rigorous evaluation of Enterprise Java Bean technology

The middleware technology used as the foundation of Internet-enabled enterprise information systems is becoming increasingly complex. In addition, the various technologies offer a number of standard component architectures that can be used by designers as templates to build applications. However, there is little understanding in the software industry on the strengths and weaknesses of competing technologies, and the different trade-offs that various component architectures impose. The paper describes the approach being taken in CSIRO's Middleware Technology Evaluation (MTE) project to attempt to alleviate some of these problems. Specifically, the results from some experiments in using different Enterprise Java Bean application architectures are presented, which clearly show how the different architectures scale and perform under various client loads.