jeff,

over the past six years, i've led the development of four major web-based applications, all using different suites of products. the rundown is as follows:

online banking site for 8th-largest US bank: apple webobjects, java/objective-c, no DB (interface to mainframe for back-end data), HP-UX deployment.

cellular network engineering tool for 2nd-largest US carrier: oracle app server, oracle DB, oracle XML toolsets, solaris deployment.

ticketing and reservation system for a major airline: bea weblogic app server, JSPs, java, jini, oracle DB, linux deployment (except solaris for oracle).

online trading interface to financial exchange: .NET architecture, ASP.NET pages, SQL server DB, (future) NT server deployment. this project is still in active development, and i'm beginning the process of planning the deployment now.

all of these were "mission critical" systems, security and reliability were major issues, and some were public revenue-generating applications.

my experience is that the combination that was the best to work with overall was weblogic/java/JSP/oracle. i did run into some problems with oracle on solaris (under certain high-load conditions, a transaction would hold onto a DML lock and never let go, even though it wasn't blocking, eventually leading to an application crash), but oracle developed a patch for us that took care of the problem. weblogic was rock-solid under linux, but i don't have experience running it on solaris. we did not use EJBs in our application, only JSPs and DB connection pooling, allowing us to license the much-less-expensive weblogic express product.

i would avoid oracle's application server and XML toolset. they do work, but the performance and reliability were definitely not there a year and a half ago. that may have improved by now, but my belief is that there are better products on the market.

i'm still wrapping my head around all of the .NET system components, but so far i'm not very impressed. it will be interesting to see how the deployment goes. this is my first time deploying a major MS-based application, and i'm sure there are lots of lessons to be learned along the way.

let me know if i can answer and specific questions.

--dan.