What is the best technology for web applications? Good question, but though there is no shortage of opinions, it is hard to find detailed independent studies comparing platforms.

Enter The Middleware Company, which last month published a report comparing a J2EE application built with WebSphere using an Oracle database and Red Hat Enterprise Linux with another using Microsoft dot-Net, SQL Server and Windows 2003. A third implementation used Rational Rapid Developer, a model-driven Java development tool.

The results favour dot-Net on most counts, including performance, reliability and development time. There is also an extraordinary cost difference - around $20,000 for dot-Net server and development tools versus around $250,000 the other platform. Another notable finding is that the model-driven tool failed to deliver either on performance or ease of use.

Unfortunately the report is only semi-independent, conducted by a third party but commissioned and paid for by Microsoft, so it won't settle any arguments. Still, it is a good read, with plenty of real-world detail about the development process.

The single most important factor in many projects is the skill and experience of the developers, and in this case the hidden advantage of the Windows team was their deep knowledge of a single platform and a single set of tools, whereas the J2EE solution involved melding products from multiple vendors. At the operating system level, Linux is a diverse world where every distribution is different, whereas Windows is more uniform. Uniformity and integration does bring benefits, but there are also costs such as vendor lock-in, limited choice, and a single target for hackers.

The report gives both sides of the Microsoft and J2EE divide cause for satisfaction. Microsoft developers will be glad to see that their platform can perform well, while Java advocates can note the good performance of the eventual Java solution.

Another important factor is that a new version of J2EE is emerging from Sun and the Java Community Process, which has simplified both development and deployment. In the rapid development area, JavaServer Faces is a new API for web-based user interfaces that rivals Microsoft's strong ASP.Net technology. Java developers have the advantage of an array of vendors and open-source projects competing to improve their tools, and it is likely that in time the platform will at least match Windows on productivity and ease of use, and will provide what Microsoft cannot provide: the ability to run on a diverse range of operating systems.

You can find the Middleware Company's report at the web address below.

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