[Zope] Zope vs J2EE

[Joe Grace]

Well, I'm not experienced with J2EE but here's my take anyway.  Actually, I
should say I'm parroting what I heard (though I try to be an informed parrot
:-) earlier this week.

I personally *do* like Java but, based on a EJB user group get-together
earlier this week, I would shy away from using EJB at this time for a
production site.  This meeting was a first meeting, and it's quite possible
that the group had no experts with all the right answers.  However, the take
was that EJB is not quite ready for prime time.  It's the right direction, but
there's a whole lot of undefined (spec) stuff and a lot more needed on
implementation to get *all* the promised advantages.  IOW, EJB doesn't buy
everything development wise that it seems to on the surface.

Basically, manage your expectations.  My take away understanding is (at this
current time), EJB offers transaction management transparency.  That's the big
win.  Other stuff ends up being too brittle to be useful on a dynamic web
site.  Web site development using EJB seemed to be an afterthought.  The
picture isn't great yet.

In particular, the consensus by the end seemed to be to avoid using Entity
Beans for now (those are the persistent ones) and just use Session Beans.
Instead of Entity Beans, just put a layer of custom database access objects to
do the database stuff between the session beans and the DB.  If Entity Beans
become desirable later on, just upgrade the DAO layer to use entity beans
instead of accessing the DB directly.

As an aside, if you want pure power from a commercial platform, you might want
to take a look at Apple's Web Objects.  I've only heard good things about it
(scalability, tools, etc.) though I know it's proprietary.  FYI, Apple is
rolling out Java2 (finally) with their new (mach/unix) OS X.  (Also, FYI,
Java2 won't make it to OS9 since all Java development by Apple is now for OS
X.)

Zope figures into this equation for sheer flexibility.  I would think Web
Objects would work for pure performance (scalability), documentation, and
support (though $).  Before I get pummeled for my (perhaps incorrect) opinion
on performance, let me just say that WO has the advantage (performance-wise)
of Objective-C underneath.  O-C is compiled.  OS X, btw, will be Java on top
with O-C working underneath as necessary (O-C is somewhat more flexible than
Java type-wise, so it's necessary some places for WO even if Java is generally
preferred).

That's my capsule perspective.

Good luck,

= Joe =


Wei Tao wrote:

> Nemeth Miklos wrote:
> >
> > In our department I have decided (as a CTO) to use Zope for an ecommerce
> > application server.
> > And I also would like to use it for another application for a customer.
> > I will have a presentation about Zope and our plans in a 3-day technical
> > conference of our corporation.
> >
> > Can I have some (primarily technical) arguments why Zope is better to
> > some (especially Java-based) specific web application server tool
> > (WebSphere, Oracle Application Server, Oracle8i, NetDynamics, etc)?
> >
> > I'd be very glad if some of you share his thoughts about the topic.
> >
>
> I found a report titled by "The Technical Benefits of EJB and J2EE
> technologies over COM+ and Windows DNA" several days ago:
>    http://web2.java.sun.com/products/ejb/pdf/j2ee_dnatwp.pdf
>
> ( And there is a sister report titled by "The Business Benefits of EJB
> and J2EE technologies over COM+ and Windows DNA":
>    http://web2.java.sun.com/products/ejb/pdf/j2ee_dnabwp.pdf)
>
> It is written well. Though personally I dislike java, I have to say
> that J2EE is well cooked.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Zope maillist  -  Zope@zope.org
> http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope
> **   No cross posts or HTML encoding!  **
> (Related lists -
>  http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce
>  http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )