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Web Services Making Software Coexist?
Posted by
Hemos
on Fri Aug 02, 2002 11:10 PM
from the get-together-right-now dept.
from the get-together-right-now dept.
jgeelan writes "Despite the competitive uproar, coexistence of J2EE and .NET will be the norm and most sophisticated IT organizations will deploy on both development platforms. Who says so? No less an authority than the CTO of J2EE powerhouse BEA Systems, Scott Dietzen, writing in this month's Web Services Journal.
Dietzen acknowledges that an ongoing conflict is in progress between Java and C# and between J2EE and the .NET server family and is refeshingly honest, admitting that "there is some truth to the 'write once, test everywhere' complaint against Java."
His overall conclusion: ".NET is finding a sweet spot for programmed user interfaces, while J2EE continues to enjoy its sweet spot for server-side applications."
Unusual honesty by someone so highly placed. Isn't this just what the software industry needs more of, in these increasingly interoperable times?"
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Honesty or idiocy? (Score:5, Interesting)
On a single platform, perhaps. It's true enough that early editions of Java's Swing weren't the swiftest UIs on the block, Swing has to contend with being platform independant. How well does a
The UI for most server-side applications is probably HTML, anyway, so I'm not sure what his point was. I suspect BEA is just making nice noises toward
We'll see how long that lasts when/if
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:5, Insightful)
On a single platform, perhaps. It's true enough that early editions of Java's Swing weren't the swiftest UIs on the block, Swing has to contend with being platform independant. How well does a
The UI for most server-side applications is probably HTML, anyway, so I'm not sure what his point was.
That is the point. C#, ASP.NET and VS.NET are the perfect combination if you want to make HTML based UIs. You just drag a button onto a webpage, double click and write the event handling code in C#. The C# is compiled into a server side component along with some ASPX pages. The UI is completely HTML based and cross platform. The HTML generated can be transformed to work on all types of browsers (utilising the features of each). Anything that can't be done client side is done on the server side.
You pretty much write HTMl pages the same way you would write a standard GUI application and
Parent
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:2)
Okay, I'll grant you that seems like a pretty cool development environment (for that sort of thing). But it isn't
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:5, Informative)
VisualWorks has had this ability for quite a while, at least 4 years or so, which was the first time I played with it. I don't doubt that there may have been something before it that did the same thing, but it preceeds
Parent
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:2, Interesting)
the real agurment here is how long does it take to develop out of the box a simple or complex application... cold fusion is simple a much faster language, yes it's actually more 4gl than 3gl, but what are u trying to do? pull some data out of the database and display it....
in cf that means 2 tags (opened and closed) and var names and html
<cfquery name="test" datasource="localserver">
select name, email, description
from users
where active = 1
order by name
</cfquery>
<cfoutput query="test">
#name# - #email#
#description#
</cfoutput>
looks quite clean huh?
why not look at at coldfusion mx, a j2ee application server, where the tag based language makes things simple and you can always fall back to java.
The when you want a more complex decent ui than is possible with html, use flash, w3c dom is great but not so prevalent..
and flash makes for a much for reliable user expierence than dhtml
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:2, Informative)
Smalltalk has been phased out by IBM, and the widget elemnts etc are old.
Squeak is being developed and it's open source: it looks like a toy but its approach to user interaction using "morphs" is interesting.
Cincom (its smalltalk site slashdotted? :) ) is developing version 7 [cincomsmalltalk.com] of visualworks smalltalk, and it will surely be out before i finish checking out all the features of version 5 :)
The widgets are a little dated indeed, but being a very modular system there may be GUI enhancements to download, try looking around.
I'm impressed with some smalltalk environment features, like being able to modify some code (which gets dynamically recompiled, no "build" command) and having the changes reflected on the application while it is running, being able to inspect and extend system classes (smalltalk applications merely extend the system, in fact), being able to save and restore all classes and variables i'm working with in a single image file or in distinct packages.
I'd like to know if there is a java environment with similar features.
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:2)
I personally do development in Smalltalk (using Squeak), and I love it. One of my projects over the last few years was enhancing the IRC client built into Squeak. I was adding the ability to have bots. In a couple days of hacking, I didn't have to restart the application once- all objects of the classes being changed had the updated methods as soon as I saved them. Then, I wasn't a newbie anymore, but it still amazed me then, and still does now. I shudder to think how much time extra it would take to have to recompile and restart after every insigificant change of code.
Aaron
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:2)
HTML generated can be transformed to work on all types of browsers (utilising the features of each)
Or it could have just been written to te W3c spec in the first place. No, that wouldn't be the MS way. Instead make something that has to know which browser you are using and change its behaviour accordingly. (Which of course fails utterly to be *forward* compatable with new and improved browsers you haven't heard of yet. I'm sick of websites that tell me I need to "upgrade" to Netscape 4.76 or I.E. 5.0 when I'm running something *newer* that would work if the site would just send me the HTML it would have sent to one of those two browsers.)
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who's done web pages for real has had to deal with browser compatibility. The ASP.NET approach of emitting different HTML for different browsers makes this a LOT less of a pain.
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:2)
While I don't disagree that using HTTP is often dubious, getting around firewalls isn't the only reason. (Heck, a lot of this stuff is on intranets behind the firewall anyway.)
Other reasons include:
- HTTP is a "connectionless" protocol, ie the connection is not held open (well, HTTP 1.1 aside). This means if somebody walks away from his computer in the middle of a session he isn't still tying up a socket and process (and possibly a DB connection) on the server. Which means overall you can get away with a smaller server, resources are shared better.
- HTTP is a pretty simple protocol, that means it's easier to implement and can be squeezed into smaller code or devices. It's also pretty ubiquitous, there are all kinds of libraries to support it. Not true if you're rolling your own protocol. (I know, I've rolled a few of my own when HTTP's statelessness is more trouble than it's worth.)
- HTTP lets you use a browser as a standard and ubiquitous client if you need user interaction (as you point out, the client isn't necessarily a browser.) That makes UI development easy and cross-platform. The only other choices that come to mind for readily and widely available clients are things like NNTP, SMTP, FTP or telnet, none of whice really lend themselves to generalized interactive client/server use (except telnet, if you're into the command line interface). Or X, but then you spend a lot of work on the GUI.
And of course now that it has become a big deal, there are a ton of tools out there to make it simpler to develop and deploy such apps.Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually you answered your own question. It runs fine, if its an ASP.NET UI. Working on HTML/JavaScript based UI is nearly the same process as developing a client side UI in
Re:Honesty or idiocy? (Score:2)
Well not specifically, no, but the context was comparing with Java and Swing. Swing is hardly the UI used by JSP or servlets, HTML/JavaScript is.
Kind of a moot question, otherwise, eh?
More Python Please! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More Python Please! (Score:2)
You have heard of Jython [jython.org] (nee JPython), haven't you?
(And you can add new features to Java applications at run time too (ClassLoader? JavaBeans? hello?). But of course you knew that.
Re:More Python Please! (Score:3, Interesting)
But yeah, you're very right. There are many options other than
Re:More Python Please! (Score:2)
http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/dotnet
Interoperability's a bitch... (Score:2, Interesting)
Imagine you have a web-based e-mail system. And a web-based word-document reader. One written in J2EE and one written in .NET. Click on a word attachment in the e-mail program, any guess as to whether or not it will open in your word-document reader? Answer is nope!
That people are just now figuring out that demanding that all things be written in One True Language to be hosted on One True Platform from One Designated Service Provider is kinda sad - doesn't that sound restrictive?
Of course, my commentary on this issue isn't coming from nowhere - I wrote [appslink.com] a service designed to fix the problem, at its core. But just because I'm biased doesn't mean I'm wrong.
Re:Interoperability's a bitch... (Score:2)
Err...yes, of course it will if you've set the MIME type correctly.
Cheers,
Ian
Honesty doesn't count for much these days. (Score:2, Interesting)
"Linux on the desktop is dead! Windows on the server is dead!"
The fact is that the "x and y both have their place" articles, although honest, are much less likely to get published, because media outlets know that less controversial opinions just aren't talked about as much.
This thread will be lucky to receive 200 comments. Had the article submitted been "Java is dying!
Having said that, I use PHP. Stop by #php on irc.openprojects.net! </plug>
Re:Honesty doesn't count for much these days. (Score:2)
I also disagree with your thread acitivity. This story would no doubt get more responses if it wasn't posted late in the evening.
-a
Uses (Score:4, Funny)
(end list)
Re:Uses (Score:2)
Re:Uses (Score:2)
I use Livejournal, which has both a web based front end and a Web-API based one (which I prefer posting from).
I've communicated from a Windows based middle-tier to a tomcat web server using SOAP.
There's an awful lot of places that having web services is/will be handy.
Re:Uses (Score:2)
Those who find uses will get rich on them. Those that don't will whine about why the world changed out from under them.
Re:Uses (Score:2)
I'm convinced that web services is a better way of doing things when you need to integrate coarse-grained components on different platforms.
Still lacking specifics (Score:2)
I notice in all your counter-rantings that you never described an *actual* application, and how
There are plenty of existing communication approaches out there. Sun and
In the mean-time, we have open existing K.I.S.S. protocols to get real stuff done without selling out to the battling fat cats and getting shot up in their cross fire.
Let them battle by themselves, we don't need 'em.
from the Department of Redundancy Department (Score:2)
I suppose a definition of "web services" is needed to clearify this discussion.
If web services is "using the web to communicate between 2 or more different machines", then "web services" is actually *redundant*, because that is precisely what the WWW is for, isn't it?
It would be like calling something the "data transfer network" or "transportation vehicle" or "fly-capable airpline" or "floating boat" or "kill-capable military"[1], etc.
[1] Well, I suppose there are some really lame militaries out there.
Re:Uses (Score:2)
I have not seen anything there that could not be done with HTTP get or post parameters (zipcode=12345&storename=buzzwords_R_us, etc.) and returning XML, comma-delimited lists, or a map image URL.
Here is a odd example on that site:
"As an example, let's say you are a waste removal company and you have uploaded the locations of all your dumpsters to the MapPoint
Sounds like a bit more than a "map" service to me. It is MS trying to host *other* biz functions also (such as scheduling) it sounds like. Just another way for MS to get into your pants........pocket.
BEA's ploy to keep MS off their back (Score:2)
BEA makes money by selling WebLogic, which is an environment for developing server-side apps. He seems to really be saying, "Look, Microsoft, you go mess around with programmed user interfaces, because server-side development is our turf."
Openly defying Microsoft doesn't usually work, but clever companies have managed to stay out of Microsoft's sights by promising to play well with Microsoft and stay in their niche.
Re:BEA's ploy to keep MS off their back (Score:2)
The fact that he's coming out and making such a statement so early in the .NET lifecycle is presumably an indication that BEA is under big pressure from customers and/or investors to come up with a coherent story of where BEA will fit into the brave new .NET.
I'm not sure that laying your head down dog-like on the ground and exposing your jugular to Microsoft is really the way to stay in business, though. BEA may think Microsoft doesn't have a sweet spot on the server, but that's a bit like the old joke about dinosaurs: it's OK, dinosaurs won't eat you, they're herbivores. Yeah, but do the dinosaurs know that? I don't think Microsoft knows it's not supposed to have a sweet spot on servers, and Dietzen's position isn't going to make a whit of difference to Microsoft.
You think BEA is that weak? (Score:2)
Do you mean to imply that BEA is scared with good reason, or that they're scared for no good reason? I guess what I really want to know is whether you feel BEA is weak, or J2EE is weak, or both?
I'm not sure that BEA is exposing its jugular, but I definitely agree that playing the "we can all get along" game with MS usually leads to catastrophic meltdown. Only a few software companies can truly say that they've been able to successfully partner with MS without being chomped on hard. But using the McNeally approach isn't always successful either.
It seems that one of the most vexing business challenges of this age is "how do we compete in the same market as Microsoft?"
Re:You think BEA is that weak? (Score:2)
The problem with Dietzen's statement is that it's not really plausible - he's saying that BEA's OK because Microsoft won't find a sweet spot in the application server space. The obvious problem with this is that Microsoft will certainly find a sweet spot in that space, it's just a matter of time. So Dietzen's statement, instead of showing why BEA has a future, actually calls its future into question. He's drawing attention to their weakness, which seems like a questionable strategy. Of course, the weakness is fairly obvious, but if that's the best defense he can come up with, then man, BEA's toast!!
I'm not saying it's inevitable that BEA will be trampled by Microsoft, but a comment like Dietzen's seems pretty revealing as to what he thinks of their prospects.
It seems that one of the most vexing business challenges of this age is "how do we compete in the same market as Microsoft?"
I agree - as a software developer, I've run into this issue personally. It's a big reason I focus heavily on free software, where appropriate, and recommend it to my clients, many of whom have been burned by Microsoft's shifts in direction, lack of standards, and lack of openness. In a sense, Microsoft has been one the best motivating factors for free software. I doubt, for example, that IBM would be doing so much free software if it weren't for Microsoft.
In a way, BEA is actually caught between Microsoft and free software. Open source J2EE servers are pretty much in their infancy, but the problem for BEA is that the "intellectual property" inherent in today's application servers is really not that difficult to duplicate. So you get free servers like JBoss, and cheap servers (with source) like Resin. I doubt many BEA clients are quite ready to jump ship today, but over time, the standardization and network effects of free & open solutions can become quite compelling. I don't think time is on BEA's side...
What's really gonna happen is... (Score:2)
Cornering the Autocoding Market [slashdot.org]
Some info on Autocoding [google.com]
j2ee and .net stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Big companies just try to sell something 'good' for software development. The problem is, that they sell it to suits who just believe the marketing crap of sales people. Most of the time there are no technical people involved in these decisions and people like us just have to work with it, because 'it's good', 'scalable', 'integrated', blkahblahblah...
I really hope all this crap is over in a couple of years, and we can just use whatever we want to use and know is good. Getting experienced in using progamming languages and tools is the only way to see if things work. My experience is that in projects where they used stuff like J2EE, SOAP and COM, a lot of people where involved (a lot of suits) and the projects last long....over 2 years for a simple web based application!!! Arrgrhgh!! I've seen a lot of those projects and nobody overthere knew how to query a database using SQL how to use TCP-sockets, or what's the HTTP-protocol all about...They laughed at me because I did not want to use Visual Age for Java and I used javac and vi instead. "In Visual Age I cannot not see on which line parse errors occur" was my answer, when they asked what was better about just using the command line. I had to explain the word 'parser'.....
People on these kind of big projects just had a one week course and some experience with Excel macro's. And who sells those courses....???
I think, it's all corrupt...
fedor
Web Services When I Can't Even Get My Email? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't reliably get my Usenet newsfeed without "Connection unexpectedly closed by server" messages.
Anybody think you can run General Motors or any bank on that basis? Anybody think any ASP isn't just going to be an ISP with a new acronym?
In a way, until the phone companies get us that infinite bandwidth they were promising a couple years ago, this is good because it will probably kill Microsoft when it becomes apparent that none of this will work for reasons entirely outside the issue of which programming language or object broker is used.
.Net vs. J2EE vs. PHP etc (Score:2)
To me the idea of webservices seems to be the ability for a client of some kind (could also be a server type of client) to send a stateful request for info to a server of some kind. Since developers have been working around the Browser's lack of state for years and non browser applications can use a myriad of protocols etc to communicate to their server, such as XML-RPC,RMI,CORBA or whatever.
Turning SOAP and UDDI into a universal standard is nice but can anybody tell me why companies trying to sell web services are any different from companies that tried to make a living (and flopped) with the ASP thing a few years back?
What he's really saying... (Score:2)
Re:Since when have .Net/C# proven themselves? (Score:3, Insightful)
18? It's not like it just came out yesterday, the beta has been available for at least a year and a half. Wrox put out books on programming with the beta languages and the beta framework.
Re:Since when have .Net/C# proven themselves? (Score:2)
Granted, with
Re:Since when have .Net/C# proven themselves? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Since when have .Net/C# proven themselves? (Score:2, Insightful)
Having standard ways to do remote communication is good, but all the bloated hype from all the various camps does a lot of dis-service. As far as I'm concerned, all the big tech companies are guilty of it, so it's not like MS or Sun are worse than others. The real benefit for businesses with technologies like C#, Java, .NET and web services is standard protocols and frameworks. The chances of a company finding skilled replacement when staff leave is more likely than a non-standard proprietary system. For me, the hassle of marketoid gibberish is worth it to move towards more standard and flexible ways of developing software.
Re:Since when have .Net/C# proven themselves? (Score:2, Insightful)
Clearly, BEA needs to grow over the next decade, and has to be very careful about the inevitable market power that Microsoft will have with
BEA isn't stupid. It realizes it has to be ready as a potential Microsoft partner, or it risks limiting its dominant position in the application servers and related software market to the Java side of the world. That's why it's being so "honest" about things like this.
Re:What is a website? (Score:2)
Applications haven't been "monolithic" for a long time. MVC had it's origins in application design, and anything decent these days is designed with the same 3-tier to n-tier approach that a web site would have.
It's all in the economics - you have to be able to update one part of the application without the changes propagating throughout the whole application.
Re:What is a website? (Score:2)
Management views the website, with its browser interface, as little more than a modern face on the old IBM mainframe application with its 3270-terminal interface.
The 3270 was a page-mode text terminal that let the app define fields the user filled in or checked off and then click a 'submit' key to send the form's contents back to the mainframe. Sound familiar?
That the back end now may consist of apps or components spread across several boxes, vs different apps and components in the same big box, isn't that huge a difference. (Just because the apps may have run on the same mainframe doesn't mean the whole thing was monolithic from an application sense.)
Re:What is a website? (Score:2)
It ain't pretty.
Re:BEA is a joke (Score:2)
As far as I know, JBoss and Jonas are the free, open-source J2EE appservers competing with BEA. May be you meant one of them.
Re:BEA is a joke (Score:2)
Thanks for the pointers however. More work, more fun. More acclaim when I save us hundreds of thousands of dollars.
-Todd
Re:BEA is a joke (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the support people don't follow you either, because you don't have a handle on what you're talking about? Maybe it seems overpriced because you're buying a web app server to do the job of an editor? Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but just some ideas.
Re:BEA is a joke (Score:2)
Anyhow, I've found that IBM will cost you just as much.... except you get something that is much rougher around the edges. Want EJB 2 support? IBM should be out with their first cut in another month or so. BEA went gold within a month of the spec coming out last November. My benchmarks showed it is not even close to a fair fight with the current v4 or beta5 vs BEA.
Solid EJB containers cost real money. Oracle is getting cheaper -- just starting to work with it. Sun looks like they are giving one away for free, but not sure how solid that one is. JBoss gets pretty high praises from those in developement.
Low cost IDE's for doing EJB work are the bane of Enterprise Java Bean developemnt. You end up spending big bucks 2K+ for an IDE like JBuilder, or you get something that works for only one App server. If JBoss expands the eclipse tool the same way IBM did, it will be a nice kit.
MS Model not ready for primetime? (Score:4, Insightful)
And why's that? WSDL isn't MS proprietry language, it's a standard defined by many companies, and should be used with UDDI, currently in v2.0.
So, f00zbll, show me the beef where
ps: I develop a lot of
Parent