Php/Java justifcation please help

[Ben]

This is not a troll post. I am doing research on my own too but could use
your guys/gals help. As mentioned in prev thread our company is about to
embark on building a large scale web based application. "Shimmy" provided
some help already but need more. This app will be hit by thousands of
users, large data sets and be fed by GPS handheld devices such as cell
phones, which will also require apps we write running on them. The response
time of current data to screen is paramount (which relies in largely on DB
design I realize). The decision makers are leaning towards .NET and I feel
they are making a mistake. Hoping not for MS bashing here but facts.

- Why is/isn't .NET a better solution for large scale apps?

- Are the majority of current large scale web apps using .NET ?

- Are the majority of handheld devices and cell phones using MS based tools
or not?

- Examples of name brand companies using either and why you think they went
that way.

- Reliability.

- Development time.

- Security, security, security which is more secure.

Any opinion must be backed by facts, examples, etc.

Any help is appreciated.

=B

[Tim Van Wassenhove]

Ben schreef:

This is not a troll post. I am doing research on my own too but could use
your guys/gals help. As mentioned in prev thread our company is about to
embark on building a large scale web based application. "Shimmy" provided
some help already but need more. This app will be hit by thousands of
users, large data sets and be fed by GPS handheld devices such as cell
phones, which will also require apps we write running on them. The response
time of current data to screen is paramount (which relies in largely on DB
design I realize).

Imho the quality of the network connection (bandwith and latency) are
very important too.

The decision makers are leaning towards .NET and I feel

they are making a mistake.

Why do you think they are making a mistake? Under the assumption that
they have foundings for their conclusions, which of these would you want
to debunk?

It's possible to make unreliable, insecure applications that run over
time and budget with any development platform... Imho, it all depends on
the capabilities of the people that are going to realize (analyze,
architect and develop) the product.

--
Tim Van Wassenhove <url:http://www.timvw.be/>

[Ben]

"Tim Van Wassenhove" <ti***@users.so urceforge.netwr ote in message
news:dO******** *************** *******@scarlet .biz...

Ben schreef:

[snip]

which of these would you want to debunk?

These statements:

1.) The majority of web based applications are running .NET.

- Quick visit to the largest financial institutions does not show this as
true
- Yahoo appears to be using PhP and Java for thier apps

2.) .NET is more secure and reliable

- Again, using large financial instituions as an example, the lack of .NET
(asp) being used leads me to beleive that it is less secure, less standard,
less reliable

3.) .NET will result in decreased overhead and total development cost due to
more rapid development and more reliable tools

- My *limited* experience showed that more time was spent on the back end of
..NET apps, buggy, etc.

>

--
Tim Van Wassenhove <url:http://www.timvw.be/>

[Toby A Inkster]

Ben wrote:

This app will be hit by thousands of users,

Thousands per second; per hour; per day; per year?

- Why is/isn't .NET a better solution for large scale apps?

It is a good solution for large scale apps if your developers know it. It
isn't a good solution for large scale apps if your developers don't know
it.

- Are the majority of current large scale web apps using .NET ?

Google mostly uses C; Yahoo mostly uses PHP; Amazon uses Perl to a large
extent; Microsoft mostly uses (surprise, surprise...) .NET.

- Are the majority of handheld devices and cell phones using MS based
tools or not?

No. PalmOS is big on handheld devices, though Windows (various flavours
thereof) are also a major presence and there are plenty of others too,
including a sizable installed base of various embedded Linux flavours.
Symbian is still the biggest OS in the mobile phone arena, with about 50%
of the market, though this is falling; Linux is next, with about 25% and
then Windows with about 15%; PalmOS is a minor player here too, and again,
plenty of others.

If you want to support a wide variety of mobile phones, then you want to
look at Java/MIDP, which virtually all recent mobile phones support,
except for the ones that come free with Happy Meals. Most handheld devices
could probably be coerced into running Java too -- particularly Windows
and Linux based devices.
It sounds to me like a good portion of your project is not web-based, so
PHP is probably not the ideal language for it. The method that I'd be
tempted to use would be:

1. Find a general purpose language that your development team are
comfortable with. Examples would be C, C sharp, Java, Perl or
Python. Write the majority of the application in this, including
all the logic and data access. Expose this application via a
set of web services.

2. Write your mobile client in Java. The mobile client should not
try to access the data or do anything clever on its own, but
should only access the main application's web services.

3. Write your web site in a suitable language which your development
team is most comfortable with. Examples would be PHP, Perl, Python,
Java, or ASP.NET. Again, it shouldn't do anything clever -- just
provide a web site communicating with the main bulk of the code
via your web service.

This should give you a clean split between the application, the website
and the mobile clients. You can then write each component in the most
suitable language for the task at hand.

Also, as far as web services go, although SOAP is well-established, the
current vogue is RESTful interfaces. And, unlike most fashions in
technology, there is a very good reason for it: REST is far more sane
than SOAP.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
Geek of ~ HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python*/Apache/Linux

* = I'm getting there!

[Roman]

Ben wrote:

This is not a troll post. I am doing research on my own too but could use
your guys/gals help. As mentioned in prev thread our company is about to
embark on building a large scale web based application. "Shimmy" provided
some help already but need more. This app will be hit by thousands of
users, large data sets and be fed by GPS handheld devices such as cell
phones, which will also require apps we write running on them. The response
time of current data to screen is paramount (which relies in largely on DB
design I realize). The decision makers are leaning towards .NET and I feel
they are making a mistake. Hoping not for MS bashing here but facts.

PHP has been designed as "glue" language and many libraries are written
in C/C++ for performance reasons. PHP is slow, although PHP5 got better.
Find the benchmarks on:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/

Please note, that C# in above benchmarks is for Mono compiler. MS
implementation is superior to that in many aspects including performance.

..NET has been designed as general purpose programming environment and
not just a scripting glue. .NET IL compiles right before it is executed
into the machine instructions similarly to JavaVM.

Novel did not invest $millions to port .NET into Unix world just for
fun. They must have seen a benefit and market.

I share the same opinion as your team - high performance website with
lot of built-in computing would be better off with either .NET or Java.

>
- Why is/isn't .NET a better solution for large scale apps?

- Are the majority of current large scale web apps using .NET ?

I see many Java servers (CNET, 1&1). eBay, Digikey (big electronic
distributor) run ISAPI extension, which is about as fast as custom
webserver (Google).

You can simulate these things by website stress tools. Do your research.

But the general answer is that tool is a tool, it helps you if you use
it properly. I don't see anything wrong with well designed PHP website
with most PHP sessions mostly waiting for database results.

--
Roman Ziak
www.dipmicro.com

[larry]

Reading through your posts you are looking for:

- a large scale web based application.
- This app will be hit by thousands of users
- large data sets and be fed by GPS handheld devices such as cell
phones, which will also require apps we write running on them.
- The response time of current data to screen is paramount (which
relies in largely on DB design I realize).
- Reliability.

Those are your metrics, which I can tell you is not some slap together
job from off the shelf resources (it may be off-the shelf, but you are
going to have to do some fine tweaking to get it to run properly).

- Security, security, security which is more secure.

Especially this, you need to know what your threats are and how they
are handled.

- Development time.

This leads to the old and true addage, do you want it fast or do you
want it fixed right? You probably are speccing past any Rapid
Application Development platform (which does not neccisarrily equate
to rapid response application).

I have see ASP stuff do great things and I have also seen it do lousy
things (many times). The crux is to invest in the time and
responsibility to get it to work on the platform that meets your
needs.

Don't pick the language first. Start with the list at the top and see
what's available to meet those meeds and how it will mesh (especially
the cell/GPS-web connectivity) some deveopment platforms will work,
some won't and I bet some part of it will need to be something finely
tuned and custom.

[Jerry Stuckle]

Ben wrote:

This is not a troll post. I am doing research on my own too but could use
your guys/gals help. As mentioned in prev thread our company is about to
embark on building a large scale web based application. "Shimmy" provided
some help already but need more. This app will be hit by thousands of
users, large data sets and be fed by GPS handheld devices such as cell
phones, which will also require apps we write running on them. The response
time of current data to screen is paramount (which relies in largely on DB
design I realize). The decision makers are leaning towards .NET and I feel
they are making a mistake. Hoping not for MS bashing here but facts.

- Why is/isn't .NET a better solution for large scale apps?

I don't know. Why is/isn't it?

- Are the majority of current large scale web apps using .NET ?

Not in my experience. I've found very few .NET web apps. By far the
majority are running on Linux/Apache - which means NO .NET. APPS.

- Are the majority of handheld devices and cell phones using MS based tools
or not?

Who cares? The webserver sure doesn't. My servers don't even bother to
check if you're running Windows, Linux, Mac or even MVS/XE.

- Examples of name brand companies using either and why you think they went
that way.

None here. But even if I did I wouldn't be giving out private customer
information.

- Reliability.

As reliable as the programmers' experience allows.

- Development time.

As long as it takes - in any language/framework. No better answer with
the details you've been given.

- Security, security, security which is more secure.

Depends on your programmers. Languages themselves are not
secure/insecure. Their implementation is.

Any opinion must be backed by facts, examples, etc.

You won't find a lot of facts for free. Now if you want real hard facts,
expect to pay for them.

Any help is appreciated.

=B

--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
js*******@attgl obal.net
=============== ===

[Willem Bogaerts]

3.) .NET will result in decreased overhead and total development cost due to

more rapid development and more reliable tools

That is exactly the opposite of my experience. I have been a .NET
developer, and I am glad I could switch back to PHP. The .NET framework
has a huge lot of features already programmed for you, but they are
programmed so badly you have to rewrite them yourself. Just try to
incorporate object-oriented responsibilitie s within web service classes
and you know what I mean.

--
Willem Bogaerts

Application smith
Kratz B.V.
http://www.kratz.nl/

[Ivan Marsh]

On Sun, 01 Apr 2007 10:19:10 -0500, Ben wrote:

This is not a troll post. I am doing research on my own too but could
use your guys/gals help. As mentioned in prev thread our company is
about to embark on building a large scale web based application.
"Shimmy" provided some help already but need more. This app will be hit
by thousands of users, large data sets and be fed by GPS handheld
devices such as cell phones, which will also require apps we write
running on them. The response time of current data to screen is
paramount (which relies in largely on DB design I realize). The
decision makers are leaning towards .NET and I feel they are making a
mistake. Hoping not for MS bashing here but facts.

- Why is/isn't .NET a better solution for large scale apps?

- Are the majority of current large scale web apps using .NET ?

There's only one thing that needs to be said about this:

Microsoft Vista has ZERO .NET code in it. Why would you use a technology
that isn't used by the manufacturer of that technology.

[Tim Van Wassenhove]

Ivan Marsh schreef:

<off-topic>

There's only one thing that needs to be said about this:

Microsoft Vista has ZERO .NET code in it. Why would you use a technology
that isn't used by the manufacturer of that technology.

I'm pretty sure that Microsoft uses .NET for a lot of it's projects..
But does that mean that it should use .NET for *all* it's projects?

--
Tim Van Wassenhove <url:http://www.timvw.be/>