They are taking my PHP away...

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b_rock_1
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They are taking my PHP away...

Post by b_rock_1 »

I've been working at this company for a little over a year now, and developing PHP & MySQL applications on Apache. Now when going through the approval process for my last application, they denied it based on, "Our company has not finalized our stand on open source products...".

So now I'm forced to start developing with what they consider are approved languages and architecture.

My boss wants to send me to training, but we have to make a decision in the direction we are going to take now since PHP & MySQL are now out of the question.

We've got to choose between:

Java on the iplanet (java sun) web server using Oracle as the database.

Or VB .NET on IIS with MSSQL as the database.

I'm at a loss. Any suggestions?
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

Frankly, neither are that great.. but if forced to choose, Java. Personally I can't stand VB, although .NET is 100000x better than the previous versions, it's still not that great to me. :? That, and I have yet to meet more than a handful (literally) of people that can set up an IIS server just as secure and safe as most other servers outta the box.

Is this a JSP server? or just Java?
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evilmonkey
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Post by evilmonkey »

feyd wrote:Frankly, neither are that great..
I completely agree. You'll never find a solution as good as the PHP/MySQL combo. If you must switch however, here are my 2 cents:

Firstly, you'll probably get as many opinions as there are people on this. Personally, I'd go for VB.net and MsSql. Why? Because I hate Java, and I wish death upon Java. ASP may be bloated and crappy, but Java is way to abstract for me. I like things to be real, and work with things I can work with, not work with concepts that are way out there and think of ways of applying them to real life.

Also, as feyd mentioned, security is a big issue. IIS constantly has security problems, I'm not sure if I've ever heard of a security hole in Iplanet. Oracle is a very very expensive solution, but hey, it's not your money, so why do you care? Once again, I'd go with the Microsoft solution (*bracess for a lot of flaming*).
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

If it's possible to use C# instead, I'd would go after that.
b_rock_1
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Post by b_rock_1 »

feyd wrote:If it's possible to use C# instead, I'd would go after that.
Actually... I was taking a look at our Tech Standards doc, and C# is in there.

I'm looking strictly from a web-based application point of view.

I'm seeing C# .NET, VB .NET, ASP, Java JDK 1.3, J2EE v 2.0, JSP 1.1, & Perl 5.6 (and of course html, xml, javascript...)

I haven't done much reading up on C#. Advantages? Coming from a PHP background... is there a tough learning curve?

Thanks,

-Brock
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

C# is a pretty darn easy curve for the most part, if you have some programming experience. It's only got 80 keywords. Everything is object oriented. You can extend literally everything. Take the great ideas of Java, C, C++, and VB (the few that are there).. mash them together, and you get C#. Plus, I love the XML documentor.

In the end, VB.NET and C# compile to extremely similar CLR bytecodes, so they are roughly the same. However, VB.NET doesn't seem to be as widely used and cared about. A lot of that reason is it's pretty much the same work to jump from VB6 to VB.NET as it is to jump from VB6 to C#.. and since historically VB programmers get little respect and less pay than a C programmer, more and more are making the jump.
b_rock_1
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Post by b_rock_1 »

Thanks for the info feyd. I'm doing a write-up right now on the direction we should go, and I'll definately mention what you had to say about the C#.

Appreciate the feedback!

-Brock
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

Here's some sites and books I can recommend on C# and the .NET platforms:

http://gotdotnet.com/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/

Programming C#, O'Reilly Associates (ISBN 0-596-00489-3)
C# Unleashed, Sams Publishing (ISBN 0-672-32122-X)
Microsoft Visual C# .NET, Microsoft Press (ISBN 0-7356-1290-0)

I can post more great general programming books too, if you'd like.
fractalvibes
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Post by fractalvibes »

Don't know jack about Java. We use ASP/ASP.NET and DB2 for our web solutions. Language choice is more about personal preferences in .NET - all compile to the same intermediate in the CLR, so one is no more powerfull than the other; could be cobol.net, c#.net, vb.net...etc. Probably VB is actually the predominant language, as vbscript was the predominant language for classic asp. Keywords is not the issue - there are about 4000 objects and thousands of methods introduced with .NET - a bit to keep up with. I suspect new .NET adopters coming from a non-classic ASP background might prefer c#, or those from a PHP or Java background.

While quite powerfull, it does at times seem a bit bloated. If you go that route,be sure and use Visual Studio. Trying to code .Net with code-behind is a major headache just using a text editor....

I feel your pain. There is talk of us perhaps having to integrate/support a
java-based portal running on ibm websphere. funfun...

Long Live PHP!!!

fv
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Christopher
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Post by Christopher »

I would go Java over .NET becaese it is has major multi-vendor support and is open. If you go with .NET, say goodbye to Apache and the open source world. You really need to educate your company on what it means to lock youself into the Microsoft stack.
fractalvibes
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Post by fractalvibes »

arborint wrote:I would go Java over .NET becaese it is has major multi-vendor support and is open. If you go with .NET, say goodbye to Apache and the open source world. You really need to educate your company on what it means to lock youself into the Microsoft stack.
Not so sure about that these days...cross-platform integration seems to be the thing these days. IBM has made major strides into incorporating things
into the .NET platform. A few years ago IBM was 100% Java/Websphere - you would not find a mention hardly of anything IBM or Java on their site that even mentioned ASP. Now we have DB2 tools that integrate totally into Visual Studio.

Perhaps the best question to ask is what development and database platforms best can integrate with other platforms? Certainly not meant as
comment against Java, I know about 0% about it so I have to speak from the viewpoint I do know a little...

fv
kron
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Post by kron »

frankly I've took a look at ADODB.NET [for instance], I haven't seen a big difference in the code form VB.NET and C#... actually sooner or later every VB programmer has to go for C [the market dictates it], so I'd guess C# is the better choice of the two.
hokiecsgrad
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Something not mentioned

Post by hokiecsgrad »

So, I know it's heresy to even suggest, but I'm going for it anyhow. I think you'd be surprised by Cold Fusion 6.1. If you're just concerned about the web / intranet development, CF is a really great technology. I used to poo-poo CF like everyone else from a PHP background, but I was forced to use it for two years and really fell in love with it.

If you have a solid computer science background, you can really do amazing things in very short order with ColdFusion.
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