Hello,

I need some advice as to whether Enterprise Java Beans, WebObjects
(presumably in conjunction with EJB), or another enterprise-level
solution, would be most suitable for this project:

Currently my company has a website hosted remotely. The site uses
almost exclusively PHP and MySQL. The company has an internal
FileMaker database which is not connected to the web database, as well
as a Microsoft SQL Server database. They are also using Intuit's
Quickbooks, lending software known as ProLender, and Calyx Point for
various accounting tasks. It's a financial services company.

The company wants to host their web site locally because they want to
integrate several of their systems. The FileMaker database will
communicate and pass information to the MySQL database and the SQL
Server database, and vice-versa. There will also be communication to
ProLender and Quickbooks, presumably via APIs that are provided those
programs (e.g. we would probably create a VB or Java module that
bridges the various programs).

The company is fast growing, and may eventually need to load balance
their database or website (or both) onto several servers. There is one
full-time programmer, a full-time hardware maintenance person, and a
few low-level tech support persons. Keeping costs down is a
consideration, but they don't mind paying for a software tool if it
will significantly simplify their operations. You may assume that the
programmer is fluent in every programming language and OS/platform.

My question is this: We're looking for some way to abstract the
details of the data interconnectivity and basically simply the task of
integrating these systems. We have heard great things about a product
known as WebObjects, made by Apple, for doing this. However,
WebObjects doesn't seem to have been widely adopted. It seems that EJB
is how most companies accomplish this.

We don't have any first-hand experience with WebObjects and are
hesitant to delve into something new and possibly not strongly
supported. We're also hesitant about it's staying-power. It is
proprietary, after all, and has a relatively small part of the market;
we don't want to have to worry about Apple pulling the plug on this
product after we've dedicated the future of our company to it.
However, we've heard some intriguing things about WebObjects, and it
seems like it may be just what we need.

Would integrating our system using WebObjects be worth it? Should we
stick to just EJB, or look into something else? Can you give us some
pros and cons regarding WebObjects vs. EJB? I'd really like an answer
from someone who has experience with both technologies and who can
give me a very objective answer. The EJB/WebObjects folks that I've
asked typically tout whatever they're most familiar with.

Thanks,
Darren