Dueling ApplicationServer Platforms

Sun JavaTM J2EE vs. Microsoft.NETTM

Adapted from William ZachmannCanopus Research Inc.

Part 1: The Bigger Picture

• The Relentless Advance of the Mammals of Intel Against the Dinosaurs of IT

• The Rise of Middleware and the Ongoing Evolution of Object-Oriented Component-Based Development

• The Leaner, Meaner World of IT in the ’00s

• XML-Based Web Services and the Emerging Third Generation of the Internet

• A Fantastically Fertile Field of Opportunity

The Relentless Advance of the IntelMammals Over the IT Dinosaurs

• 1970s: Birth of the Microprocessor and the First Micro Computers

• 1980s: The Decade of the Personal Computer and the Rise of the LAN

• Recession of the ’90-91: The Epicenter of the First Wave of Dinosaur Kill. (Wang, Dec, Data General, Tandem)

• 1990s: Wintel Servers in the Enterprise• Dot.bust began the Second Wave of Dinosaur Kill• 2010s: The Era of Final Extinction

Middleware and the EvolutionComponent-Based Development

• The Long Pursued, Elusive, Dream of Object-Oriented, Component-Based, Platform Independent, Development (DCE, OpenDoc, CORBA, and so forth)

• Java (J2EE) and .NET Are Today’s Choices

The DotCom TulipManiaPhenomenon of the 1990s

• The DotCom Boom and the “New Economics” of the Nutty Nineties• Champaign and Caviar Technology Purchases by the DotCom Companies

(e.g.):– Sun SOLARIS– Oracle– Cisco– EMC– Vitria, Broadvision, Vignette, Plumtree, Commerce One and all the other “value

priced” software vendors

• Out of money? No problem! We’ll just go to the NASDAQ and get some more!• Fear and Greed Factor Among the Brick’n’Mortars

– Fear: We’ll be wiped out by a dot.com!– Greed: We can get rich in the stock market, too!

The Leaner, Meaner World of IT inthe ’00s

• Welcome back to the real World!

• Return to ROI

• Meat and Potatoes replaces Champaign and Caviar

• Real Costs Count

• TCO Jive Does Not

• Buying Smarter

The Three Generations of the Internet

• G1 Internet– Before 1992 (pre-browser)

– ASCII text information exchange

• G2 Internet– 1992-2001

– HTML information access and display, web applications

• G3 Internet– 2002-2010(+)

– XML-based system-to-system interaction and integration

– The age of Web Services. WS-I.ORG

A Fantastically Fertile Field of Opportunity

• Tough Times Lay Down Compost

• Fundamental Innovation Typically Entails:

– New People

– New Firms

– New Money

Part 2: Java and .Net

• A quick Java history and Vendor overview

• Java and Web Services

• Benchmark Disasters

• Future of Java

• What the heck is .Net

• Myths and Realities

• Decisions

A Little Bit of Java Platform History

• May 23, 1995: Java Technology Launched by Sun

• October 16, 1996: Java Bean Spec Completed

• February 18, 1997 JDK 1.1 Ships

• April 2, 1997: Sun Announced EBJs

• June 15, 1999: J2EE Announced

• December 8, 1999: J2EE Platform Ships

• January 31. 2002: Java 2 SDK Enterprise Edition, Version 1.3.1 is released

• Currently J2EE 1.4 moving along, due out next year

Assessing J2EE App ServerVendors

• BEA WebLogic is #1

• IBM WebSphere is #2

• Oracle 9iAS and iPlanet are the (distant) second tier

• And then there is everyone else (the even more distant third tier)

Authorized Java TM

Licensees of J2EETM (as of Mid-February 2002)

• ATG

• BEA Systems

• Borland Corp.

• BroadVision

• Brokat

• Cape Clear Software

• Compaq

• Computer Associates

• Fujitsu

• Fujitsu Siemens Computers

• Hitachi

• HP Bluestone

• IBM

• In-Q-My

• Interworld

• IONA Technologies

• iPlanetTM E-Commerce Solutions

• Lutris Technologies, Inc.

• Macromedia

• MERANT

• NEC

• Nokia

• Oracle Corporation

• Persistence Software, Inc.

• Pramati

• SAS Institute, Inc.

• Secant

• SilverStream

• Sonic Software Corporation

• Sybase, Inc.

• Talarian

• TIBCO Software, Inc.

• Tmax Soft

• Together Soft

• Trifork Technologies

• WebGain

J2EE and Web Services

• Scott McNealy’s View: We’ve been doing it all along

• Sorry, Scott but you are wrong

• The sad, sorry, saga of ebXML

• Where the real action is:

– SOAP, WSDL, UDDI

– IBM and Microsoft Drive the Stack

– WS-I.ORG

• Built in vs. Bolted On. Pet Shop Disaster

• Web Service in J2EE 1.4

Benchmarks

• Middleware Company. Leading J2EE consulting firm.

• www.middleware-company.com

• Hosts of www.TheServerSide.com

• Leading Java Community Web Site.

The Present and Future State of the Java Platform

• J2EE 1.3 (and EJB 2.0)– Rounds things out (e.g. JCA, Message Beans)– Partially addresses performance issues with Enterprise Java

Beans in general, entity beans in particular– A (very) thin smear of web services

• J2EE 1.4– Various incremental improvements

• I/O, JFC updates, long-term persistence, printing, etc.

– More web services stuff

• J2EE Beyond 1.4– Where does the platform go from here?– Vendors going their own ways?– Tools?

Problems for Sun/Java

• Death by Committee

• Holding the Community Together

• Relationship with IBM

• Hardware Company

• They don’t own the leading App Server

• Who make the tools?

• Daring move to Linux

Just What the Heck is .NETAnyway?

• Understanding .NET can be be a bit tricky, because Microsoft uses the name in several different ways.

– As the brand name for the latest version on the Microsoft server-side approach generally

– As the brand name for Microsoft’s server software products in particular

– In the context of Microsoft’s own approach to web services

– . NET binary technologies• Visual Studio .NET

• Windows .NET

• CLR

• C# Language

Microsoft’s .NET EnterpriseServers

• Application Center• BizTalk Server• Commerce Server• Content Management Server• Exchange Server• Host Integration Server• Internet Security and Acceleration Server• Mobile Information Server• SharePoint Portal Server• SQL Server• Windows 2000 Server• Windows .NET Server (on the way)

A Bit of .NET History

• Builds on, but also goes beyond the COM/COM+/DNA legacy foundation

• More than four years in development

• Not a reaction to Java

• XML and web services were designed in early in the process

.NET Myths and .NET Realities“Proof by Repeated Assertion”

• Myth: Unlike Java .NET is Proprietary– Reality:.NETTM is no more proprietary than J2EE TM

• Myth: Unlike Java, .NET is not a standard– Reality: Key parts of .NET are standards – Java, however, is not

• .Net is not scalable, reliable, secure– Reality: .Net implementations, properly done, are at least as

scalable, reliable, and secure as anything J2EE, correctly done• .Net is not a reliable platform for industrial strength

systems in the enterprise– Reality: .NET is at least as well suited for the job as is J2EE

• .Net is Windows Specific– Reality: Myth of Lock-in and Portability

The Truth About Vendor Lock-in

• No technology, regardless of the promises made for it, truly delivers complete platform independence. This is a fantasy. The truth is that any non-trivial application systems will end up locked into one vendor or more vendors’ products. The issue is not that of zero lock-in, but of which vendors you prefer to lock-in with.

• With J2EE, you will in fact end up with substantial lock-in, not only to some particular vendor’s J2EE application server suite, but to some particular operating system as well.

• With .NET, you will certainly lock-in with Microsoft Windows – but you become free to choose your server hardware from any vendor that sells servers, with only two exceptions: Apple and Sun.

The Tools Dimension, Languages, and Roles of C#, VB, and so forth

• Practically speaking, tools matter – and a lot, too!• Anders Hejlberg has long been associated with the best

tools in the business outside Microsoft. And for the past four years, he’s been working on .NET and C# at Microsoft.

• Reusability of code is nice – but reusability of the IT skills people actually have can often deliver even more immediate substantial business value.

• C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Cobal.Net, etc.

.NET and Web Services

• .NET and Microsoft’s initiatives are very closely linked

• There is, however, no necessary connection between .NET and the IBM/MicroSoft web services protocol stack (WS-1.ORG).

• .NET will, for most organizations, provide the most effective platform from which to build and to consume web services simply by virtue of offering the most immediately accessible, practical, understandable way to do so.

• XML and web services are not bolted on to .NET. They are built in at a very deep level. This is a key practical advantage that .NET has over J2EE.

Some Basic Facts Beneath theChoices

• Costs do matter

• There is no reason to choose a more complex, costlier option over a simpler, less expensive one

• Good enough is good enough

Conditions Favoring .NET

• Business requirements can be adequately met using Wintel servers

• Cost minimization is a top priority

• Existing Windows-based server infrastructure is in place

• Windows deployment and administration skills are readily available

• Business experienced Basic, C, C++, COBAL, etc. programmers readily available

• Integration with MS Office applications is advantageous

• Rapid responses to changing business requirements is critical

A Simple Decision Model for Choosing Between J2EE and .Net

• If circumstances absolutely require or strongly favor using J2EE, then use J2EE

• Otherwise use .NET

• It really is that simple!

• Absent compelling business reasons favoring J2EE, .NET will generally be the lower cost, more agile option offering the best overall return for IT dollars invested

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