[TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
Mitchell Morris
mitchell.morris at cingular.com
Tue Jul 3 10:21:05 EDT 2001
Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote in
news:3d8zib16g7.fsf at ute.cnri.reston.va.us:
> Alex <new_name at mit.edu> writes:
>> What's EJB got going for it, anyway?
>
> Buggered if I know. Perhaps they provide a frictionless method for
> transferring a business's money to consultants.
>
> --amk
As amazing as it might seem, the Java hype machine wasn't really getting any
traction until J2EE came along. Now, suddenly, Java has a niche where
developers and development shops are willing to work around non-portable
manual-task-intensive vendor lock-in environments that are rapaciously
priced. Even if you don't see what the big deal is, you do recognize from
their behavior that they think it is one (I hope).
EJB:Java :: Zope:Python
That is, it is an environment and a framework where the developer provides
the "business rule" logic, potentially in a dynamically reloadable form, and
the framework ensures that the rule is applied when the matching inputs are
supplied. It also provides for applying an object-relational layer over a
database, with the database-backed persistence being controlled by either
the framework or the developer-supplied code. As of the latest release, it
also now provides a message-based event architecture. This means that the
developer doesn't need to write a huge chunk of their required
infrastructure, but can press on to the domain-specific bits.
As a side benefit, most EJB containers supply webheads with dynamic page
generation (servlets and JSP), so it is (potentially) a single point of
contact to buy/maintain/service everything a company needs to perform nearly
all their Internet business.
All in all, it's been a pretty big win for Java. Conventional wisdom and
some non-peer-reviewed studies suggest that Java per se provides very little
leverage over C++, that the average developer doesn't build Java solutions
any faster or more bug-free than they build C++ ones, and that selecting
Java over C++ means you'll need faster processors and more memory because of
the concomitant runtime costs. In spite of those tremendous disadvantages, a
shop can deploy an Internet-based thunk of functionality in Java much faster
than C++ because they can just go buy an application server for Java and C++
still doesn't have one.
if-only-it-wasn't-Java!-ly y'rs,
+Mitchell
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