Web Services Making Software Coexist?

jgeelan writes "Despite the competitive uproar, coexistence of J2EE and .NET will be the norm and most sophisticated IT organizations will deploy on both development platforms. Who says so? No less an authority than the CTO of J2EE powerhouse BEA Systems, Scott Dietzen, writing in this month's Web Services Journal. Dietzen acknowledges that an ongoing conflict is in progress between Java and C# and between J2EE and the .NET server family and is refeshingly honest, admitting that "there is some truth to the 'write once, test everywhere' complaint against Java." His overall conclusion: ".NET is finding a sweet spot for programmed user interfaces, while J2EE continues to enjoy its sweet spot for server-side applications." Unusual honesty by someone so highly placed. Isn't this just what the software industry needs more of, in these increasingly interoperable times?"

Comments

Re:Honesty or idiocy?

[RevAaron]

I don't know about for Java, but VisualWorks Smalltalk (there's a free, non-commercial version for download for Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, many other Unices) that does something like this. Using one single UI builder, you construct a GUI for the traditional GUI application. From the same spec it generates, a web application and interface. You define callbacks and such just like you would for a regular app, and VisualWave (the web app toolkit) takes care of the rest of it.

VisualWorks has had this ability for quite a while, at least 4 years or so, which was the first time I played with it. I don't doubt that there may have been something before it that did the same thing, but it preceeds .NET and probably even a similar Java tool.