What sort of Business Applications do you build with .NET, Java, PHP or Ruby?

Question

Yesterday I asked a question about COBOL guy moving to modern platforms and I got some great answers.

I was thinking about what kind of applications get built with java or .net? I know for sure that most corporate portals, blogs, discussion forms, surveys, tracking who registered which course, progress of your e-learning and stuff like that besides online tools such as job sites, reservation systems, dating sites, social networking tools get built using Java/.NET/PHP/RoR. Of course, this site runs on ASP.NET!!

There are certain classes of application such as Logistics, Inventory, HR, Payroll, Travel Accounting that mostly go the way of SAP/Oracle Financials etc. I guess Java applications do some kind of interactions with these applications to get data out; not so sure about .NET. Maybe smaller companies that can't afford SAP goto .NET or Java?

Then there are some applications required to automate common business process, workflow and there are many tools to do them but I'm not sure if Java/.NET comes into picture there.

So, here is my question: what kind of business applications do you normally develop in Java or .NET. Are they used to build the applications I classified under SAP?

Answer 1

In .Net, I build:

From enterprise management applications like (CRM, ERP ... for desktop and web) ... to mobile applications for enterprise and consumers (on Windows Mobile compact framework)...to games as a hobby (XNA)... to utilities and plugins to my favorite applications that support some .Net plugin model (Visual studio), and also some personal miscellaneous projects.

So far all I wanted to create I've been able to do in .Net and specifically C#.

Answer 2

Well, I've seen websites that were build on ASP.Net that included internet retail e-commerce sites, though that included ASP along with .Net parts but this was years ago.

Where I worked just before here, we had a .Net application that did location-based services using a GIS package along with .Net 2.0, that was used for cargo tracking mainly but there were other uses like seeing if equipment left an area at night as some things may get stolen and recovery could be made so much easier by knowing when the item left.

In my current position, we have CRM and CMS systems built using .Net. There are also mini-applications for things like Software Activation or crash reporting that are also done in .Net partially.

Answer 3

I feel like I'm posting a resume here, but what the hell...

• Large-scale data acquisition/validation systems
• Data visualization and analysis tools
• Billing/AR/AP systems
• 3rd-party integration systems
• Web sites/applications (both content-based/CMS and transactional)
• Workflow and process automation
• Security back-ends (single-sign-on, that sort of thing)
• IT support systems (system metrics)
• Other business support systems (performance metrics, HR stuff)

...there really isn't much you can't do in .NET, and Java's about the same. PHP is more typically used specifically for web sites, not back-end logic or integration.

Ruby I can't really speak to personally, but I only ever seem to see it discussed in the context of Ruby On Rails, which is also web-specific.