[ale] J2EE vs PHP

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Chris, 

	PHP, despite its new OO features and continual expansion, is simply a great 
tool for building websites that can be defined generally as a set of 
templates that you transform via search/replace or apply xml-type operations 
on. The tool is primarily a template parser with some nice intermixing 
features. If that covers 90% of the functionality you're trying to achieve 
its hard to argue against it cause it does it fast, well, cheap, and easily. 
I've written many a quick website with the php online docs sitting there on 
an open web page (probably the best open source online doc of all times). 
Connected to various databases, performed image manipulations, even sucked 
data out of another website - all at runtime. Its so sexy and seductive when 
you get something running easy - but it don't scale. Make sure you can commit 
to it before you get too involved... haha.

	However, if you need middle-ware or backend processes staying live and are 
trying to architect an environment that just happens to use the web for its 
primary user-interface, PHP is not the way to go. J2EE is certainly an option 
although the initial cost to get anything running that is going to be 
scalable and supportable is very high. Perl is simply not maintainable for 
anything that PHP wouldn't be better suited for unless you're just really 
into the language. My strong recommendation, if you can't afford or prefer 
not to pay the initial costs of getting a Java system going, is to check out 
Python with Quixote. In not much more time than it would take to get a PHP 
system going, you can have a full OO system architecture started and 
demonstrable. Python provides just about everything that Java initially 
promised but is far less verbose and was allowed to age and expand more 
gracefully. I literally picked up the book with online docs and had a 
complete web-based server app running in under 72 hours with no previous 
python experience. With Medusa (which I believe is now included in Quixote or 
at least well integrated) you don't even need a webserver and it runs under 
any typical platform out there without a single code change. Hard to beat.

	Good luck & best regards,

		Ben Scherrey

PS: One warning, the #python guys on free-net irc are complete jerks to 
newbies. Prepare to be flamed if you don't ask the right question there. An 
entire new group, #py, was formed as a result of their attitudes and agendas 
but it is, alas, less well traffiked. FWIW - they are not at all 
representative of the pythong community as a whole who are generally 
extremely friendly and helpful.

On Thursday 11 March 2004 10:52 am, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> Most of the pages will be dynamically created.  In the future we may
> have processes running in the background and applets on the web pages
> that need to communicate to proxies that will allow them to communicate
> to remote equipment.  This is why I would consider J2EE over PHP  I'm
> also more OOP minded.
>
> On Thu, 2004-03-11 at 09:46, George Carless wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 09:38:27AM -0500, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> > > I'm working on a big web project and am not sure which language to use.
> > > When would one choose PHP over J2EE?
> >
> > Without wishing to be rude, I would say that since you don't know the
> > answer to that question (implying that you don't know the relative
> > strengths of each), you should go with that which you know best.  Even
> > with PHP's (limited) OOP support, the thinking behind each is rather
> > different (although, as with most things, most tasks can be handled by
> > either).  But a question of which to use really comes down to a decision
> > on the relative merits of each platform.  J2EE tends to be considered
> > more scalable, and also generally shows better performance in many areas.
> >  But then Java has overheads that PHP doesn't, and is also arguably
> > easier to jump into than is J2EE.  But this again comes down to 'use what
> > you know': I would say that for a 'big web project' either platform would
> > be fine, if coded properly.  And coding something properly is easiest
> > when you know the platform well.
> >
> > --George
>
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