Which application server has the fewest critical bugs? Is easiest to configure? Has the best quality overall? These questions play a key role in application development professionals' evaluations of their options for existing and future applications. Experience with early app servers has created a canon of popular wisdom about the quality of app server products, but five long-held assumptions within this canon are out of date.

Overall, the January 2008 Global Forrester Research/BZ Media Application Platform Quality Online Survey revealed that the quality differences among major platforms, including Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and two open source options, are narrower than many...