advantages of .net over java in Intranet

Question

Our company has an intranet with 30,000+ web pages and 160+ web applications. This is being used by 5000+ employees.

We also have internet with 150+ Web applications and 100+ websites. Both the internet and Intranet is 7+ years and they run on classic ASP.

Recently some "Technical Architects" came up with a wonderful idea of migrating from ASP to JAVA and as a result projects which would normally take 2/3 months is taking 6/9 months in java. The reason for this is we have 100s of custom made VB components which are reusable and java team is finding it difficult to migrate all those and they are taking lot of time.

Out of 160+ web applications in intranet, most of them are not available to everyone. Meaning we have a VB component which is used to check the logged in user and allows entry to the particular application. We also have permission management page which allows us to add / remove users to applications (just like ASP memebership control).

I want to show the management that it is easy to move the intranet application to .net by using the .net membership control and "Windows Authenticaion" is better.

Can you help me gather some advantages of using .net for an intranet when compared to java keeping in mind that our existing applications are windows based.

I have gathered some points afetr reading similar questions in SO. But I need some more specific to intranet.

Note: I am not here for an argument about java and .net. java is a wonderful language but looking at these factors to consider before migration its crystal clear that its better to migrate our applications to .net but my "tech architetcs" are taking a wrong decision.

Answer 1

This is very situation dependent. In your situation, if it is as you described, the decision to go to Java was not very well thought through. You obviously have a large investment in the Microsoft stack. I don't think there is a compelling reason to drop all of your legacy code and go through all this pain just to go to Java.

I may get flamed but it is not as if you get that much more power from Java than .NET to justify this kind of pain. I think your current code investment is enough reason to continue with the Microsoft stack. You can interoperatte with COM and all of these things much easier from .NET. Although, admittedly, you would have larger code changes even in going to .NET. It would be an easier challenge though; a lot of your code could live alongside the new .NET code; you would just have to do some work to manage things like Session and all of that.

Answer 2

My 2c is if you're 9 months into a project already, then no matter how valid the .Net/Java debate may be, the last thing you want to do is throw away working code.

I would think that once your java programmers come up to speed on how the VB objects work (i.e. learn VB) then they will dramatically increase their ability to recode the objects in java.

Aside If you are using Windows and Microsoft technologies then you will have great benefits being able to fall back onto your existing domain infrastructure.

ASP.Net will not magically become secure because your on a domain though, you will still have to hand code a lot the security in at an application level. Using .net however will give you good benefits if you go to an MSSQL based system. Additionally, it may be easier for you to write some office interop tools as well if you are in a large company, for generating reports etc.

Answer 3

There is a company MainSoft (from Israel) that will allow .net assemblies to be run on Java systems. My last company had some people use it to migrate certain .net web apps to the corp standard of Tomcat a few years ago. something about byte/code conversion I think but I'm not sure.

Answer 4

I work in a BigCo as well... We have a growing .NET curve here taking over both from VB6 and from Java. There is and will be a lot of Java written here, which is great. I really think that the 'we will be 100% technology X' is wrongheaded. I understand why people go that way, but in a typical large shop it seems to be far too limiting.

I'd suggest instead of trying to combat Java on the large, just look for the opportunities for .NET where it is clearly better for a particular project. i.e. if you are writing a small app to do some CRUD used by 10 or less users, it makes a lot of sense in my mind to do it with WinForms instead of as a Webapp because it's so much quicker to write them and with so few users you don't have a distribution problem. You also get the full integrated security thing if you use AD too. That's been the approach we have here & it has allowed .NET to penetrate all over. In other projects, it is clearly better to go Java (particular requirements, team experience, etc), so great--do it. Any large company is going to have a lot of Microsoft and a lot of Javaesque hardware sitting around to run stuff on so it doesn't seem to me that in BigCo it should matter much at all which of the two big enterpris-ie platforms you choose. Sometimes .NET is better, sometimes it's Java. I think a big shop should foster both.

I think in a few years, we will be seeing Python (maybe more like IronPython) or Ruby as a viable alternative too.

Answer 5

The question isn't about the technical benefits of one architecture over another; that question is what you ask when you're trying to decide on a platform for a new project. The question is about how easy is it for you to migrate existing code to Java as opposed to .NET. If you're that far into the MS stack, it makes sense to stick with the MS stack, simply for ease of migration.

If you have new projects that are better suited to Java, by all means use Java for them. Or Ruby, or Python, or whatever fits.