stability of phoenix

[Leo Simons <ls...@multimia.com>]

all,

I have recently received several inquiries regarding the stability of
phoenix affecting that of some of the software our company produces.
This is a statement I sent in reply providing my view on this subject
(slightly edited). It is just that, a personal view, not "official" in
any way. Thought you might find it interesting (or at least amusing)
nonetheless.

The fact that phoenix is in alpha phase still does not indicate it is
not of production quality. In fact, phoenix has been in use for a long
time now in several production environments that I know of. Rather, it
is an indicator that phoenix does not yet offer all the functionality we
consider to be neccessary for a production release, and that behavioural
characteristics may change.

There are a few important differences for hosted sar applications
between version 4.0a3 and version 4.0a4. I do not anticipate many
differences visible to hosted sar applications between version 4.0a4 and
later alpha, beta and final releases in the same series. Where there are
differences, most of these will take the form of added functionality
that does not require modification of hosted applications.

This anticipation is based partly on the notice that the bug database
for phoenix currently contains only 2 entries that are real "bugs"
instead of planned enhancements, both of which are unlikely to effect
most hosted applications, or cause security problems.
Such an absence of bugs is very uncommon in the software world; most of
the software used on a daily basis in many environments has more issues
(as a comparative example, the latest version of Microsoft IIS contains
several critical bugs that are known to compromise security).

I also anticipate the first beta to appear within 3 months, and a
release will not be far behind.

Having said all this, and having close ties to the phoenix developers, I
see no problem using phoenix in its current state in production
environments and software packages. In my opinion and experience, use of
phoenix in many cases improves stability and robustness of software.

I hope this removes your concerns.

best regards,

- Leo Simons


--
To unsubscribe, e-mail:   <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>