As a developer I definitely look down upon Microsoft’s strategy of exclusivity regarding the inability of other operating systems to run applications built using the .NET framework, but as an investor or an employee of the company it would most likely allow me to sleep better at night. The fact is, no other single software firm in the global market could survive doing what Microsoft has done with .NET, and while regulation is lax here in the United States, in Europe it’s a different story. As of today Microsoft has produced the court ordered source code it had avoided producing in the past, possibly avoiding a daily fine of 3 million euro, backdated to July. Whether or not this satisfies the European courts, or provides Sun Microsystems and Linux the information they need to remedy the compatibility issues remains to be seen.
It’s a given that in spite of this issue, KnowToys Inc. will continue to utilize .NET mostly because our databases were all built using Microsoft Access. The data stored through the use of our shipping application is grounded in Access and our reporting work is done using SQL, so to build applications in say, Sun Microsystems’ J2EE rather than .NET would be borrowing trouble in my opinion. This isn’t the case when we’re building from the ground up though, as there are considerable advantages to using J2EE depending on the situation.
The J2EE platform is free and built to be highly compatible, the idea being that you can program from anywhere and install it anywhere, regardless of the operating system running on the machine. This aspect exposes the fundamental high-level difference between the J2EE platform and .NET. On a functional level there’s a matter of training, and depending on the programmer’s background, the learning curve from one to the other and vice versa is a considerable hurdle, with .NET constituting the steeper of the two. Support for both is a wash, as Microsoft staffs support and the network of open-source contributors is very responsive in helping out the community when problems arise. The cost of formal training in .NET architecture application creation can be very costly.
My advice is that until our budget allows for training, we allocate our resources to where they can be most effective. Over time if we neglect the cultivation of skills within our staff, it will come back to haunt us. And even if Microsoft’s release of their operating system code and documentation enables others to run .NET platform applications, a working knowledge of J2EE will still be necessary at times.
Reference:
Meller, Paul. November 24, 2006, New York Times, “Microsoft Gives Europe Antitrust Documents”, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/technology/24soft.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Tanenbaum, A.S., & van Steen, M. (2002). Distributed Systems Principles and Paradigms. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Farley, J. (2000). Microsoft .NET vs. J2EE: How Do They Stack Up? Retrieved November 22, 2006 from
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/java/news/farley_0800.html.
Posted by Al Swearengen in Words
