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Adversaries and Partners
Compare and contrast J2EE and Microsoft .Net. Do their development and deployment technologies compete, or is there plenty to go around?
by by Chris Schalk

October 18, 2005

We hear a lot of discussion these days about service-oriented architecture (SOA), seamless integration, interoperability, Web services, and business logic and processes and what they mean for enterprises. Many resources document the comparisons and distinctions of the development and deployment technologies on both Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Microsoft .Net. Are these two platforms really competing against one another? Or, are they both integral to achieving interoperability in the enterprise? Let's take a look at both of these technologies, compare and contrast some of their features, and maybe dispel some of the long-held stereotypes associated with each.

One long-held stereotype for Java and J2EE developers, in fact, is that they tend to be more technically inclined and have considerably more core programming expertise. This sentiment is bolstered by a common belief like: "they have to be more skilled in computer science to work with the complexities of J2EE!" Is J2EE a technology meant only for computer scientists?

While it is true that there are complexities involved in many facets of J2EE technology, the same could be said about some of the advanced aspects of .Net. Another reason why J2EE sometimes gets a bad rap for complexity is that it is largely seen as a server-oriented technology, which is definitely a more difficult area of computer science in general. Typically, this technology involves developing nonvisual, back-end code to process large amounts of data such as back-end business logic for large-scale, industrial applications.

However, to J2EE's credit, it has recently made significant strides into more client-related software development. One key, recent change in J2EE has been a rise of increasingly powerful Java integrated development environments (IDEs) as well as some key new Web client development technologies that are geared more toward corporate developers as opposed to the traditional systems or component developers.

The Rise of J2EE IDEs
In the past few years Java and J2EE developers have had an ever-improving set of tools to help them develop a vast array of J2EE technologies. More sophisticated and powerful Java IDEs have lowered the technical bar for Java developers and allowed a larger population of business developers into the Java arena. While Java IDEs aren't necessarily a new phenomenon, recently there has been a marked increase in developer productivity provided in the latest Java IDEs. For example, some of the new tools such as the open source Eclipse and NetBeans along with Oracle JDeveloper and Intellij Idea now provide a long list of extremely powerful Java productivity development features (see Figure 1). These features include code refactoring, code completion, automatic indenting and formatting, collapsible edit regions (or code folding), and code profiling. The new, more powerful IDEs also have features that provide integration with many external open source development technologies such as Apache Ant, CVS, and Jakarta Struts.

In addition to offering core Java coding, Java IDEs have branched out and begun offering more visual development tools, including support technologies like Unified Modeling Language (UML), Struts Page Flow, and JavaServer Pages (JSP) visual design (see Figure 2).

The other important event that has increased awareness of J2EE IDEs is that they are either free or are very cheap. Both the core development platforms Eclipse and NetBeans are open source and are free. However, more feature-complete IDEs that are built on top of the Eclipse platform are for sale, though usually at modest prices. In a recent announcement at JavaOne 2005, Oracle announced that its Java IDE, JDeveloper, is now completely free of charge.

One of the newest areas of J2EE technologies to help break the mold of J2EE being a nonvisual, server-centric technology is JavaServer Faces (JSF). JSF is a new Web user interface development framework that is part of the standard J2EE technology. Its goal is to provide a single, standard, and component-centric way to build Web user interfaces productively for J2EE applications. This J2EE technology has also led to great innovations with J2EE IDEs, with new visual development support now being offered in several Java IDEs. We'll discuss a more thorough comparison shortly, but first let's have a look at what's currently hot with the .Net technology.