WebObjects -- Top-flight development environment and adequate app server

WebObjects pioneered the application-server market, and it's still a good choice for most situations calling for a medium-sized Web site where development time is at a premium and you're not expecting to serve 100,000 transactions an hour.

In fact, WebObjects may offer the best development environment in the application-server world, with a crystal-clear drag-and-drop interface centering on four different visual development tools:

• The Project Builder is the main tool for editing, compiling, and debugging Java- and C-based applications.
• The Enterprise Objects Modeler maps relationships between data sources and business objects in the application. In 4.0, this has been upgraded to including a graphical query builder.
• The WebObjects Builder designs HTML interfaces.
• The Interface Builder creates applet layouts with JavaBeans and Swing UI elements.

You can choose between Java, Objective-C, or WebScript for developing server-side applications. All have their strong points: Java is becoming the universal development language of choice in the application-server world, Objective-C is handy for running existing applications on the application server (although Apple recommends that Objective-C be run when speed is a paramount concern), and WebScript is useful when doing down-and-dirty applications for simple tasks. Be warned that the Java support is not total: there's no extended support yet for Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs).