In our experience, the product performs really well when interfacing systems with ERP's through SQL server database tables, but we've even made some interfaces with the web service functionality included with the magic xpi integration platform. Also, we've made some SAP Business One - SAP Business One interfaces, for copying information from one company to another and even between two different ERP systems.
The benefits outweigh the costs, and the ability to spin up a full cluster deployment for our internal applications on demand has been a game changer. We are able to leverage our engineers' core talents as J2EE developers without them concerning themselves with the infrastructure machinery of managing a highly available fault-tolerant server.
Although the scenarios may be online, the main service usually freezes and the processes can't transact any data. With a single restart of the service, the processes will be functioning again.
The support for more applications would be nice, even though there is a nice number of them. Most of the main applications in the market are supported.
The licensing for the software may be a little confusing; you can't buy individual licenses as they come in packages of four.
When we use the versions of GlassFish Server that were just released to the market, it causes bugs to appear. While there are workarounds to solve them in most cases, the amount of time to solve them is significant. Therefore, I would advise waiting for it to be a little more stable and for a few months to pass before proceeding to an update of a productive environment.
Honestly, we have only used and evaluated magic xpi/xpa platforms because of the recommendation of our SAP Business One main supplier, who has previously used the platform for their developments. So far, we have no regrets with the acquisition of the platform and we are very happy with its performance.
Tomcat is a more lightweight container in comparison to Oracle's Glassfish server and has wider adaptability in development for local testing. Glassfish however, as an enterprise product can offer better after sales service to clients.
The implementation time for this kind of projects has been greatly reduced.
Certifying an In-House resource in the Magix xpi and xpa platforms is probably the best option, considering all of the projects that can be developed in the future without the need of an external consultant.
The processes that have been automatized with the Magic xpi platform helped reduce human error and the time those processes took to finish.
The platform has been stable for us so we do not experience falls or service interruptions. The investment is lower compared to other solutions in the market and we have solid support from Oracle.
