[Helma-user] Helma vs Broadvision

[Anton Pirker]

Hi Ruben!

(Sorry for answering so late)
I once (already a few years ago) was part of a team which implemented a 
big portal website in broadvision One-To-One. (it was omv.com)

I did not do all the really hardcore development with broadvision, but 
made a view modules of the website and also some server-administration

Some things i can remember:

-) Broadvision License and Support was _really_ expensive (Helma is free 
and Helma developers do not cost as much as Broadvision-Consultants)
-) Setup of a Broadvision-System (for development for example) was a 
very complicated procedure and took hours (A simple Helma is up and 
running in a few Minutes)
-) Our Broadvision Portal needed eleven big IBM Servers to run smoothly. 
The _special_ hardware was quite expensive. I don't know about any 
Helma-App this size, but www.twoday.net (which is the biggest german 
speaking blog-site) runs on a few _cheap_ servers with PC architecture.
-) Broadvision Application had quite a lot of complicated config-files 
to configure. If anything was wrong the problem could be on a lot of 
places in the app. Configuration of Helma-Apps is quite easy.
-) Handling load balancing was really good in Broadvision, the also had 
some quite good always online feature. (so when you rebooted some 
servers of the cluster no one every noticed this because the current 
sessions stayed online till they finished, new sessions were prohibited, 
after all session where gone it was rebooted automatically) For 
clustering there is Helma-Swarm. I have not used it myself so i only can 
tell that i have never heard someone who uses it complaining about Helma 
Swarm.

So i would use Helma instead of Broadvision, no matter how big the 
application should be. If Helma apps are developed right they are quite 
well arranged and easy for new developers to join in.

Hope that helps a little,
Anton


Ruben Trancoso schrieb:
> Hi folks,
> I just started to work with Broadvision in a a legacy system that in 
> future should be migrated to a more up to date technology. I came across 
> Helma doing a research about alternate technologies to replace the BV 
> platform, but until know I dont have any deep knowledge of Helma 
> features and capacity. On the other hand to know about how much helma 
> can replace bv should be of a great help.
> Anyone in this list should enlist this comparision or give some grasp?

-- 
DI(FH) Anton Pirker, Helma Freelancer