🚀 go-pugleaf

Brad,
	I'm not experienced at using PHP, but I am experienced with Java and
web applications. I assume you are evaluating a server-side language --
while Java applets work well in Intranet environments there are not
enough good JVMs in people's browsers for non-trivial applets to be a
good idea, IMHO.
	Java on the server, with JSP (Java Server Pages) and Java Servlets are
a Good Idea.
	For us, PHP is simply not an option, as we are developing an
application that happens to have a web front end. We need several
100KSLOC of business logic which can be used from whatever interface we
decide to write.
	Given that your platform is Linux, Java wouldn't have been an option
until recently, as there wasn't a really good JVM for it. Sun and
Inprise now support Linux with a 1.2.2 JDK, so that isn't an issue.
	The main advantage I see to Java is that it is a 'real' programming
language with a full OO featureset, giving you the modularity,
scalability (in terms of lines of code), reuse and maintainability you
want. There's also plenty of free third party software available -- e.g.
XML parsers, HTML generation libraries.
	The learning curve for Java is very quick if you are coming from C++
(just stop deleteing :-) There are certainly more experienced Java
programmers around than PHP programmers.
	Java has much faster development time in comparison to C++, due to a
better library, and (more importantly) to garbage collection.
	Java connects very well to Oracle databases -- Oracle has 'bet the
farm' on Java, and in fact has a web server and servlet engine built
into the DB server in Oracle8i. This has the advantage of less
communication overhead between the servlet and the DB, although I
haven't used it myself so I don't know how effective this is.
	I imagine PHP is simpler than Java for simpler things.
	I'm not sure what you mean by 'power functions'?
	I think that a model which takes advantage of Java's strengths is to
combine JSPs and servlets -- the servlet processes a request, using the
parameters to instantiate a Java object which contains the data needed
for the response page. This is given to a JSP which uses it to produce
an HTML page. By doing things this way, the only code embedded in the
JSP page is simple iteration, conditional and member access code. The
business logic is all in classes used by the servlet. There are
certainly other options. Have a look at
http://www.servlets.com/soapbox/problems-jsp.html, http://webmacro.org
and look at Cocoon from java.apache.org.
	To me, the really important thing is to have a framework that is
servlet based, so that you have access to the full power of Java. If
someone wrote a PHP servlet, so that simple pages could be done with PHP
but more complex stuff would be able to call Java with no overhead, that
would be great -- as long as you made sure that you didn't duplicate
business logic in both environments, which would cause maintenance
hassles.
	The question I'd ask of PHP is: what do you do when PHP isn't enough?
(e.g. when you find you want a serious in memory data structure) There
may be a good answer to this question -- I don't know PHP well enough to
be sure.

Hope this helps,
	Tom
	

Brad Willcott wrote:
> 
> Hi there.
> 
> Firstly, this is NOT a challenge for a fight to the death, but a
> serious request for real-world experience advise. So no flames please.
> 
> I am trying to decide on a company standard for Web development. I am
> in the process of converting the company's servers from M$ NT Server 4
> to RedHat 6.2 Linux. This, ofcourse includes the Web server. I am
> pretty much sold on using Apache, and have already got an experimental
> server running with modules for: Perl, SSL, PHP and FrontPage 2000
> Extensions.
> 
> My question to you folks, is what are the reasons for/against using
> Java (not Javascript) and/or PHP as my company's web development
> language? As yet I have no preferrance for either apart from PHP's
> Open Source philosophy. I am interested in information on such things
> as: Learning curve, development/maintenance time, flexibility,
> accessing back-end Oracle databases, simplicity, power functions, etc.
> 
> Perhaps you may feel it benefitial to use both. Why? Why not?
> 
> We will be developing Web sites of varied styles and complexities.
> Many accessing back-end databases requiring complex relationships and
> integrity checking. Some will have two views of the database:
> Client/Customer view, and Company/Data Maintenance view. I'm looking
> to develop browser based data systems.
> 
> So, I wish to thank you all, in advance for your input to this
> discussion.