Java – Strengths and Weaknesses
July 18th, 2009
One of the major strengths of Java is its portability. A certification, Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) exists. Java applications are supposed to run on any platform for which a runtime exists. J2EE servers exist for various versions of Unix, Linux, Windows and Mac OS and area available from BEA, IBM, the JBoss Group and others.
Let’s look at some key components for a comparison:
Open Source – Yes
Object Oriented – Yes
Compiled Code – Yes. Both precompiled and dynamically compiled when a page is requested.
Scripted Language – No
Licensing Cost – No licensing cost
Platforms – Multiple
Hardware Costs – Expensive Servers
Staffing – Reasonably easy to find qualified admin staff
External Hosting – Not readily available
Security – Good
Performance – Usually requires extensive configuration and expensive hardware
Scalability – Scales well when properly configured
Admin – Moderate difficulty
Available Frameworks – One (standardized)
Compatibility – Bad. There are definite problems between new and old versions.
In my next several posts I’ll compare PHP and .NET using the same parameters.