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WTF? My team uses Fortify to analyze our Java webapps (compiled on the Sun JDK and running on their JRE), which is then deployed to Linux servers running RHEL 5. HTTP connectivity for the apps is provided by Jetty; the apps themselves connect to Oracle databases (using C3P0 for connection pooling).

With Fortify 4.0, I griped that it provided no value that we didn't already get with FindBugs (for free). The 5.0 release (along with the workbench, which provides better information than the HTML report), however, did catch a few bugs which weren't caught by FindBugs. We now run both tools in our automated Hudson builds.

Where, exactly, are the Microsoft products in the above list?

Both are a good choice if you want to properly engineer a new web-based tool. ASP.NET is probably quicker but if you want to do anything really serious you'll probably want to look at purchasing Visual Studio 2005 rather than just using the Visual Web Developer Express. Also the tool support for JSF isn't nearly as mature so it will probably take longer to implement in JSF than in ASP.NET.

Having said that JSF is still a good choice - particularly if licensing costs and portability are an issue. Apache MyFaces is an excellent framework whose only downside is the poor documentation. JSF can be slower to get started with but I found that it enforces best practices more strictly and once you get the hang of all the XML wiring it wasn't that bad. Another benefit of JSF is that you'll have trouble breaking the MVC pattern but you can pretty easily embed alot of code in ASP.NET unless you properly use code-behind and deliberately seperate out the DAL which isn't the default for the point and click wizards (the DAL separation).

In the end it comes down to a few things. If you have existing C#/VB skills and don't mind being stuck with IIS then go for .NET. If portability is a big issue and you'd really like to run this application on a small server running Jetty(for instance) then go for JSF.

I have no first-hand experience, but it seems to be lightweight (350K), embeddable and Tapestry is said to run under it.

While both .NET and Java are free, the application servers they run on are not. For ASP.NET, IIS is the application server. For Java/J2EE, it could be Web Sphere or a variety of others. In pretty much every case a Windows license will be a lot cheaper than the license for the J2EE app server... especially Web Sphere.

• JBoss
• Jonas
• Geronimo
• Tomcat (web tier only)
• Jetty (web tier only)

Good questions for the FAQ!...let's see:

>So, what do you really do with all
>that spam (besides mapping it?)
>
The spam we reject (after grabbing a few bits of nfo for the map). The actual data we use to make the map.

>Do you aggregate it, identify zombies,
>notify authorities, or just plonk >every little byte of it?
>
We're open to suggestions - got any good uses for the spam data? We get plenty - we get over a million emails a day and very little is NOT spam. What *should* we do with the data? Right now we map it and toss it. Ideas?

>What kind of hardware/software do you run?
>
Hardware - heck I'm not sure of that - I'd have to let Paul answer that. I've only been on board about a month - I did the RSS feeds and the map.

Software - a custom, in-house, from-scratch java mail server (written by Paul). The webserver is Jetty.

>What do you get out of it besides a bunch of
>very satisfied geeks?
>
That's it - and we don't even get that sometimes. I wish I could say we are rich beyond our wildest dreams, but the fact is it COSTS Paul money to keep Mailinator running. Over a million emails a day uses a fair amount of bandwidth/resources. I can't speak for Paul, but I did it just for fun and to add it to my resume.

brian

• http://ostermiller.org/utils/com.Ostermiller.util Java Utilities - nice CSV tools among others
• http://protomatter.sourceforge.net/Protomatter - misc tools - object pools etc. (I know, I am lazy)
• http://jedit.org/ JEdit - lightweight, with tons of plugins highly customizable Java IDE/Editor (for those who find the great Eclipse too heavy)
• http://jetty.mortbay.org/jetty/ Great 100% Java Web Server / Servlet /JSP Container with JMX etc. etc.
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/quartzEnterprise Job Scheduler
• http://mandarax.sourceforge.net/Great open source java class library for deduction rules
• http://alphaworks.ibm.com/Alphaworks as a whole are full of java goodies
• http://eclipse.org/aspectj/Did you ***** up your design ? Your project is a zombie that should be trashed and rewritten ages ago ? Aspects will save your day ;)

Jetty for web server based projects.. FreeBSD...

The default implementation of JBoss uses Jetty as its servlet engine, although there is also a download available with Tomcat.

Yes, I know it's free. Pay attention.

It does a relatively poor job of implementing the spec itself, and the spec is supposed to be its reason for being. It's gotten faster over time, which is nice, but it's still not very good at handling things. Tweaks abound, but running a custom version of a servlet container isn't likely to bring comfort to you... I hope.

I'd suggest spending some money on the container, myself; Jetty is okay, but I personally prefer Orion, which is fully J2EE, fast as all get out, and very, very easy to administer. Installation of an Orion instance takes three steps: unzip, copy tools.jar, java -jar orion.jar. Done. It's also free for development, so there's no per-seat license cost for you to use it to write code.

An aside: Oracle recently posted ECPerf numbers which were very good, and Oracle licensed the Orion codebase... and Orion costs thousands less. Since ECperf yields numbers based on dollars per transaction, you'd think Orion would kick butt on ECPerf.

I find Tomcat to be acceptable only for compliance testing, because so many people think it's the best that out there (because of the price point). I've spent a lot of time having to work around Tomcat; I'd hope you didn't feel like doing the same.

If you want something that actually is a development tool with a built-in Servlet Container, then check out Simplicity Enterprise. It uses a drag-and-drop metaphor that is much easier than Eclipse. Since it has a built-in Jetty server (the same one used by JBoss) with Execution-On-The-Fly(TM) technology you can test as you develop without having to re-compile! Definitely checck out the video

Disclaimer: I used to work for Data Representations, Inc., so I'm a little biased :)

Actually they prefer Jetty, which seems to be a bit faster (Just expierence, not benchmarks). The default JBoss Releases come with Jetty.

There's hardly an MS shop out there that hasn't felt some misgivings about Microsoft and specifically .NET over the past couple of years - whether because of Microsoft tightening the licensing screws, dumping support for Java, radically changing VB for .NET, or pushing a brand new language (C#) for Microsoft's own benefit, or simply all the information that's come out in court which makes it clear that Microsoft has always been more than willing to screw their customers to make a buck.

IOW, Microsoft has provided us with an enormous amount of FUD ammunition, all we have to do is load up and start firing. Don't be too in-your-face about it, though. Instead, start by asking questions:

• Do you feel comfortable committing to .NET as a single-vendor standard? (Point out that open-source alternatives like Mono are still vaporware.)
• If you're not going to use C# because it's too new and unproven, which language are you going to use to target .NET?
• If you use VB.NET, aren't you concerned that the next version will leave you out in the cold, as just happened with the previous version of VB in the transition to .NET?
• Wouldn't it be beneficial to be able to run your server-side apps on any hardware and OS? What if you need to scale up substantially? Will you simply build a huge farm of Windows machines and pay for all those server licenses?

Don't get overly emphatic about any of this, you're just asking questions. Once the target has had a chance to think about this - maybe over a period of days, weeks, or even months, depending on the degree to which their brains are set in Microsoft concrete - you can slowly start pointing out the benefits of open platforms.

For example, running Java means using any hardware and OS as your server, today. The WORA creed actually does apply to Java on the server side - we regularly run our server apps on Windows, Linux and Solaris, without changing a line of code. Linux server farms are a heck of a lot cheaper than Windows farms, because of licensing. And if you need a single box that's bigger than any PC-class server, you can't beat the Unix-based hardware that's out there.

Running Java means wide support from multiple vendors, some of them very large and reliable, like IBM and Sun. There's competition amongst vendors in the form of multiple implementations of application servers, JVMs, and Java compilers - you can pick what you need, from open source to expensive enterprise-oriented products. The equivalents on .NET are all single-sourced - no competition, no openness.

The lack of competition within .NET has important implications: Microsoft can't fill all niches, and it doesn't even try. Its offerings are usually skewed towards the most lucrative markets, the biggest enterprises, and as a result smaller businesses that don't need all the features have unnecessary stuff pushed on them. In the Java world, if you want something small and light, you can just download an application server like Jetty, a lightweight but powerful persistence solution like Hibernate, and you've got a kick-ass application development and deployment solution. Powerful open and extensible IDEs abound, with Eclipse being a top contender.

What it comes down to is that companies have to be on some weird kind of crack to think that it makes sense to commit their development to .NET. Microsoft has upped the stakes in platform commitment required from their customers, but it's not offering anything in return. Meanwhile, there's a widely used, widely supported, competitive, successful, open, multi-platform alternative that's available today. The choice here is a no-brainer, folks.

[P.S. for those who object to the Java-centricness of all this, I'm talking about commercial scenarios where Perl, Python etc. are just not considered options. But once companies begin using open solutions, they tend to become more open to other such solutions - I had one IT manager who switched from IIS/ASP to Java/JSP recently ask me where he could download Perl for Windows.]

JBoss implements the whole J2EE platform (including Enterprise JavaBeans, Messaging, Connector Architecture, Management Extensions, etc etc). Tomcat only implements the web layer (servlet & JSPs). JBoss can embed Tomcat as its web tier implementation, although I think using Jetty would have been more reliable and better performing choice as a servlet/JSP container.