Ultra 20 Workstation Marketing Campaign Winners

The Sun Java System Application Server team hosted a marketing campaign to encourage developers to download and deploy the Java EE 5 SDK, which includes the Sun Java System Application Server PE 9.0, and describe their experiences. To qualify for the prize, the developers had to download the SDK and test it with their existing applications before sending feedback. The campaign ran for a six weeks, and replies were collected. We chose six winners with the best responses, and each winner won an Ultra 20 workstation. Feedback was judged by a team of SJSAS developers.

Here are the winners:

Nice, solid (only a few crashes which seem to have been mostly my fault). In short, I would recommend the Java EE application server to a friend.
- Stephen Connolly, STV Consultants, Ireland

I was very happy to see a nice looking admin console back in the initial 8.0 version. While I was part of the early access testing JSC2 and the final version, I really enjoyed using the debugging and deployment features. In the ninth version, I noticed a great improvement in every single aspect for administration. I love the the addition of web services in the app server.
- Serge Bornow, NetHandicap.com, Canada

I was excited by the process of building the WAR file in NetBeans on my local machine and then uploading it through the Administration deploy feature on my dedicated webhost. I have decided to use this model for all of my development projects.
- Vincent Murray, Barewire.net, Canada

As a long-time user and advocate of JBoss and Eclipse, I'm very pleased with the latest Sun Java System Application Server 9 and Java EE 5 capabilities. I've started to move all my development work and projects over to NetBeans, and the Sun application server. Administration through the web interface is simple, professional-looking, and intuitive. EJB3 annotated support along with web service annotations work very well, and support of the specs is shaping up nicely. The integration of the server with the latest NetBeans 5.5 snapshots makes all phases of enterprise development enjoyable. Thanks for providing the community with great, open-source tools, and keep up the excellent work!
- Michael Martin, Raytheon, USA

As a webmaster for a small non-profit college, Sun has made my job much easier. We are in a critical period of transition and upheaval as we move our campus from Window 2003/MS SQL to Linux/Oracle for the sake of a new ERP. Our web technologies are agile enough to serve our needs in spite of the campus-wide move, and we are quite productive in our IIS/ASP.NET 2.0 environment. Why would I abandon my code-base to migrate to Java? Java EE 5 and SJSAS make a strong argument for such a move. Sun has taken the fear out of migrating with this new release. JavaServer Faces are tightly integrated, and Java EE 5 gives me the tools I need to expand my application offerings without multiplying my support. Kudos, Sun.
- James O'Donnell, Friends University, USA

This seems destined to be a nice, tight, solid IDE. I look forward to migrating my development work to this IDE in the near future. Aside from occasional random Java exceptions that pop up, everything seemed stable and performant. What's very compelling for me is the support for Java EE 5 and BPEL. Having visual tools for these technologies built in is a big plus for upcoming evolutions of my main project at work. Since my main work project is SOA based, and we're now looking at process management, I believe this will be the tool I recommend we move to. I think I have a strong story here to contrast the expensive tool the client wants to try to standardize on. For my personal projects, I look forward to exploring EJB 3.0 with this platform.
- Mark Martin, AgileTek LLC, USA