C# vs Java...

Question

Okay I need some talking points here guys.. My company is doing a large project with our SAP system using an outside consulting firm. One portion of the project requires building a front-end that will eventually interact with SAP. The consultants are recommending that we build this in Java. I am trying to convince the higher ups to use .Net instead. Here are some facts about the project... SAP has been interacting with Java for several years and there is quite a bit more documentation available for doing so. Last fall SAP and Microsoft released the .Net Connector for SAP (a package of .Net classes to interact with SAP). Right now there is very little support and very few other companies who are using it to any serious degree. I contend that #1 we are a Microsoft House and should continue to be so. Right now we have home grown apps written in Clipper VB ASP C++ and C#; adding another language would just increase our TCO when it comes to support. #2 .Net is current/future technology Java is 1990's technology and we should not fear adapting new technologies espcially ones supported so heavily by the big dog Microsoft itself. Okay so here is what I would like from you guys... Am I correct in wanting to use .Net instead of Java. If so what other arguments can I use to justify my position? any help is appreciated! -James

marvin7 · Answer

For the purposes of your project I don't see why you'd use Java. Java certainly has its place particularly if you're going to use/are using a lot of non-Wintel stuff. Otherwise I think .NET is where it's at. Lots of people (including myself) get worried about vendor lock-in even if that vendor is the nigh-invincible Microsoft. So I can understand then getting cold-feet but it seems like they have little good to contribute so they piss and moan to seem like they are doing something. - Stud Sinister

chrishornberger · Answer

ouch

james · Answer

Okay well four weeks into our implementation project after a technical design flow document has been circulated for weeks and discussed in countless meetings one of our consultants just happens to mention this week that the way we have it mapped out is wrong... To make matters worse we may have to develop some or all of the user interface in Visual Basic 6.0 (yuck) because SAP distributes a hybrid of VS60 called Mobile Application Studio. No one mentioned this until this week and even then they consultants weren't all that clear on it and were unable to answer some simple basic technical questions. For the ungodly amount of money we are paying these bozos they had better start coming up with some concrete answers for me very soon... so there ya have it.. the continuing saga of As the Implemention Turns..... -James

chrishornberger · Answer

Oh? Do tell. Clue us in. What's the latest poop scoop?

james · Answer

The more I get into this project the more I believe that there is a special place in HELL for SAP Consultants.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Good luck !!!! Don't forget to share your success stories. BTW: Word failure throws a compilation error in .NET.

chrishornberger · Answer

James there's one other point that... while not exactly a show stopper... is certainly worth mentioning. hmm... ok 2 points: 1) .NET uses wrapper classes to house NATIVE OS-supported GUI controls. Unlike Swing... which is a nice idea... the .NET layer is free to do what it wants under the covers and rightly uses the OS provided GUI widgets to talk to the users. Swing on the other hand not only reinvents the wheel (jeez I've been using that phrase alot today) but in my opinion (and yes I've written LOTS of java code) does so very poorly. This means that .NET on say... Aqua for Mac... will use Aqua GUI widgets under the covers. On Linux one of about 1000 X-providers under the covers. Java continues to deploy Swing and has performance that varies greatly from platform to platform and often times the appearance is not as nice as the OS-provided widgets. 2) GUI performance in Java is abysmal at best. Just horrid. It's a good fast language that seems to be pretty well tuned but swing is just horrible for any kind of performance at all. Clipping sucks. Repainting sucks. Event response time sucks. Having said all that I love Java. I do however think that C# is a better java than java and in a few years when others step up and support multi-platform usage it will become the cat's ass of OO RAD languages. The .NET framework is more fresh than Java. They learned alot from watching varying success stories in Java's history and made the .NET runtime better... better in terms of convenience and better in terms of namespace organization and fluidity. Can't really think of a better term but to me it's easier to get thru' the tedious busy work crap and concentrate on the business logic in .NET than in Java. *shrugs* I don't believe that Java will die and I don't believe that .NET/C# will be the only game in town... ever... but I do believe that microsoft is never going anywhere and I do believe that nothing will ever unseat Windows from the desktop. The server market... oddly... is way more fluid than desktops. Look at how many server OSes there have been thru' the years... and thru' it all Windows and it's various flavors... has always been our gateway to the servers.

james · Answer

Very good response Judah.. here is an article on this subject that I found to be very well done http://www.cprogrammingtrends.com/cprogrammingtrends-43-20030610ABetterJavathanJava.html -James

ssswamii · Answer

Well good luck with that James. If I may throw in my $.02 I'd like to point out some other areas where .Net is superior to J2EE. I should say that I've been writing Java stuff long before I ever got involved in .Net so I am not as biased as you may think. 1. Mutiple language support. While there are some languages that compile to Java bytecode this is really more a hack than planned design. .Net's ability to run applications built with many different languages provides a option unique to .Net: the choice of programming language being a matter of preference instead of interoperability power of the language etc. 2. From a pure technical standpoint .Net's high performance collections indexers properties and delegate/event model provide a much cleaner code base than Java's greatly reducing code bloat. 3. JIT'ed machine code - while .Net assemblies are JIT'd to high performance machine code Java bytecode requires a virtual machine execute it. Not only is this slower performance-wise but it also can be messy and inconsistent with different VM vendors such as MS SUN IBM among others. 4. The standard. Yes C# and the CLI is an ECMA standard. Java is not. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/ecma/ 5. .Net is the future: as long as MS controls the desktop .Net has secured the top spot in desktop development. VS has only been out since 2002; .Net is still in the process of being adopted but make no mistake .Net will take over desktop applications on the Win32 platform will be integrated side-by-side with Java in the business sector and even has a decent chance to make a big impact on the web. 6. Backing of the most powerful company in tech the goliath MS. .Net is going to be huge perhaps the biggest impact on the computer industry since Windows 95. Intel and HP also have protected interests in .Net. Comparitively Java is a worn out shoe compared to the .Net platform - Sun is trying desperately to keep developers on the J2EE platform and protect us from going to .Net. Sun a relatively weak company competing against IBM and HP in some areas and against MS in 2 big areas will lose this battle. Just as Apple lost to MS in the desktop war just as Borland lost the C++ development tools war against MS just as Nintendo lost out to MS in the console wars just as AOL is losing to MS in the IM and ISP wars so will Sun lose out to MS in the dev platform wars. I'm not trying to start an argument here - these are visible evidences of the leviathan power that is pushing the .Net platform. 7. Innovation. C# is the result of experimenting with many business and educational languages taking lessons from the great languages of the past: foreach iteration from VB simple language layout initialization easy string manipulation and garbage collection from Java and support for direct memory manipulation as in C++ while still learning from the benefits of smaller niche languages like Lisp or Python. For example the Whidbey release of C# will include support a Lisp-like lambda function called an anonymous method in addition to providing support for new iterator constructs and the highly anticipated generics feature. Java on the other hand is truely lagging behind in innovation; language changes are submitted to committee and are often pigeon-holed or take eons for approval. All in all I hope I never have to write another line of Java. .Net is here and I for one an ecstatic to be part of it.

james · Answer

In case anyone was interested in how my little battle turned out... I've successfully convinced both the management of my company and the outside consultants that .Net is the way to go (using Xml as a standard communication link between all applications involved). What I've claimed is possible through .Net is that our UI can be dynamically updated using Xml output from our SAP System AND that it can be delivered through a User Control in Internet Explorer (see Related Article ) which will provide us with a Centrally Managed and Zero Deployment based solution. If designed this way the TCO for this solution will be far less than anything ever implemented for this type of situation. Now its time to see if I can really do it all :)

james · Answer

Anthony I agree with most of your post but you are off the mark when it comes to Microsoft's view on SAP. The folks at MS have realized they are missing out on a large chunk of high-profit sales and integration work when it comes to SAP. They realize that SAP R/3 is running primarily on Win32 based systems and a growing number are using SQL 2000 for a backend. take a look at this site.... http://www.microsoft-sap.com/default.aspx The problem with Great Plains and Solomon is that enough companies have already invested in SAP that they just are not willing to take the enourmous financial loss by dumping it and going with a product that causes only slightly fewer headaches (as in Great Plains). -James

gatlina · Answer

The truth is that your company has already made a screwball decision by choosing SAP. To the best of my knowledge there is no such thing as a successful SAP implementation. All SAP implementations are designed to extract the MAXIMUM amount of money out of a company by bringing in lots of SAP or SAP endorsed consultants to do things like coding Java interfaces. (Sound familiar?) So you are starting from an adverse position and trying to fix your problem. I assume your management would not consider the smart move and dump SAP before you go any further. Therefore I'll try and offer some helpful info. .NET is superior to Java in several ways. The .NET class libraries are somewhat more robust than those found in Java (not by much but they are slightly better). Additionally if you are directly interfacing with Microsoft Databases like SQL Server 2K nothing will offer you better performance than .NET. C# applications running under the .NET framework offer a little better performance than Java applications running on the same box. With today's hardware that is generally a minor consideration. But since you asked... The bottom line though is that if the Java libraries from SAP are more thorough than the Microsoft ones then Java may be your platform. Yes I would consider code maintainability but functionality is more important. .NET is a superior framework. This is evidenced by the Mono project which is implementing a non-Microsoft .NET system for Windows Linux and other O/Ss. Microsoft is probably NEVER going to provide significant support for SAP other than to encourage people to migrate away from it. Microsoft recent purchased Great Plains and Solomon which are high end accounting systems. Microsoft's plan is to convert Great Plains into a direct competitor to SAP. Therefore I don't think they'll (Microsoft) be working very hard to help them (SAP) solidify their customer base. Anyway... Anthony

james · Answer

Okay lets take this a step further.. is there any ONE TECHNICAL area where C# surpasses Java? I know we are all partial to C# otherwise we wouldn't be here on these forums bt I'm looking for some area where .Net has a clear technical edge over Java. -James

jcity444 · Answer

This is a tough question to answer. I think it depends upon how good the SAP .NET library is compared to what exists out their for Java. You have to debate how much you want to be a pioneer in the SAP migration area. Here is my suggestion: 1. Spend a week playing with SAP and connecting it to the .NET classes provided. Make sure it can do most of the things your app does and can be extended easily to do more 2. If the source is available Reverse engineer the .NET and Java classes using a product like WithClass to see the richness of each library. If Java has .NET beat by a long shot in support and expediency is an issue you should go with the java solution. If it looks like the library support is almost identical go with the .NET solution because in the long run .NET is promising to be a much more powerful solution. 3. If its a database-centric application you can use legacy conversion tools provided with .NET to quickly generate application classes around your solution and build C# to mimic SAP functionality. See SimplexNG for Legacy Solutions Best Regards -Mike Gold Microgold Software Inc.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

1. From a company perspectie code maintainability is a BIG ISSUE. Since you are a Microsoft shop so your company already knows Microsoft technologies which means no need to hire more people with Java expertise. 2. You dont want to develop your products with different technologies. Stick with the good one. 3. .NET is the future of programming and designed to build future applications (not the past). 4. Microsoft definitely provides better support and communities and now Microsoft is building solutions that can be customized by different users for their own applications. and a lot more .. 5. .NET cuts your development and deployment time a lot in compare to older technologies. Stick with .NET. If your company needs .NET consultants YOU KNOW WHO TO CONTACT ;).