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LAMP Grid Application Server, No More J2EE 615

Posted by michael from the corporate-duct-tape dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Check out this blog entry in Loosely Coupled about ActiveGrid's new open source Grid Application Server based on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) stack. Not to start another PHP vs. Java flame war, but it looks like LAMP is starting to grow up, and that it is much better suited for next generation applications than J2EE."
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LAMP Grid Application Server, No More J2EE

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  • In which world? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:12AM (#10886722)
    Not to start another PHP vs. Java flame war, but it looks like LAMP is starting to grow up, and that it is much better suited for next generation applications than J2EE.

    What the hell do you base that peice of tripe on? Why lets compare an incomplete system cobled together on top of PHP to a mature Java based solution which is currently being used in hundreds of thousands of enterprise sites daily throughout the world. Yeah, I can see how LAMP just kicks J2EE's ass on that one.

    Seriously, overhype much?

    • Re:In which world? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Begun this flame war has.

    • Re:In which world? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eric Giguere ( 42863 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:41AM (#10887072) Homepage Journal

      People often equate J2EE with web applications and so do the J2EE-vs-LAMP comparison without the right information. J2EE is more than just web applications. You can build non-web clients that use the J2EE component model (they can even be built in other languages and use CORBA mappings). J2EE provides connections to legacy systems. J2EE supports asynchronous messaging. You can do pretty much everything transactionally with J2EE as well, so that if something fails along the way you can rollback your changes.

      Actually, comparing J2EE to LAMP is wrong in another way. A J2EE server can run on Linux. An Apache web server is often used as a front end to a J2EE server (especially when you integrate the app server within an already-existing web server infrastructure). You could use MySQL (though I think you'd better off using ASA [ianywhere.com], but I'm biased) as long as you make sure to use transactional tables. There goes the "LAM" part of "LAMP".

      So really, you're comparing the Java-based J2EE framework against similar Perl/PHP/Python frameworks. At least, that's what you should be comparing. Maybe for pure web apps the latter are better. I don't know, but you have to compare oranges to oranges.

      Eric
      JavaScript is not Java [ericgiguere.com]

      • Re:In which world? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
        try maintaining a large commercial website in something non-structured such as Perl/PHP. Yick! (Been there, have the T-shirt and a really bad taste...)

        Don't get me wrong, Perl and PHP have their uses, but running large commercial websites is not their strong suite, at least not with the additional maintenance requirements on ours.

        • Re:In which world? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by tanguyr ( 468371 ) <tanguyr+slashdot@gmail.com> on Monday November 22, 2004 @01:55PM (#10890215) Homepage
          try maintaining a large commercial website in something non-structured such as Perl/PHP. Yick! (Been there, have the T-shirt and a really bad taste...)

          Oh come on! Some of the most heavily trafficed sites in the world - commerical and otherwise - are built on perl/php and seem to do just fine. Why do these discussions ALWAYS degenerate into "technology Y is better than technology X"? The fact of the matter is that, within a pretty broad spectrum of reason, what technology you use is not the deciding factor of how successful and maintainable your app is going to be. The day someone does come out with a miracle technology that REALLY improves a project's chances of success, we'll all know about it pretty darn quick because everybody will flock to it overnight - and i mean actual people, not magazine articles or Oreilly books. Given that we're all still having "my language can beat up your language" discussions on Slashdot, it's pretty safe to say that we're not at that point yet.

          If you had a bad experience with a Perl/PHP based site before, the chances are pretty high that the fault is more with the designers (or lack of) and builders than the languages used. No sweat, this job is a learning experience and the first couple of apps will always be dogfood. A very good book once described mastery (in the development business) as the stage where you don't want to rip up all the code you've done in the last six months and start over.

      • Re:In which world? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Lodragandraoidh ( 639696 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @09:54AM (#10887907) Journal
        Zope kicks both of their [censored] IMHO.

        Zope has:
        Built-in object database (hence Z Object Publishing Environment - ZOPE).
        Built-in http server (Medusa), and ftp server.
        Ability to integrate with other http servers (i.e. Apache).
        Built-in scripting/application language (Python - and you can add Perl if desired)
        Built-in ability to connect to traditional relational databases, if needed.
        WEBDAV compliant.
        Built-in support for XML, HTML, DTML, TAL, TALES, METAL, and CSS.
        Ability to extend the environment by building modules that become integral to the site.
        Web client based development and administration - with access control built-in and fully configurable to your needs. If you can reach it from the network, you can develop and administer it.
        A large stable of free/open source modules that can be loaded (Plone - a full function CRM solution, Zwiki - wikiwiki web clone, just to name a few).
        Built-in ability to cluster a site across multiple machines (can be architected to serve behind an SLB for scalability, or in seperate geographical locations to provide local access to shared resources).

        This is the fastest development environment I have seen - bar none. The biggest benefit comes from the object database - you don't have to think about a logical or physical data model beyond the needs of your application - you don't have to worry about how structures are defined in the database. You can move your data structures inside of your scripts directly into the object database as-is without having to monkey with table structures and all of the other baggage a relational database carries with it. Once you understand and use the object database, you never want to go back. Of course, you can attach to SQL databases, and do the silly walk if needed.

        I set up a CRM solution using Plone that has been up and working for 6 months now with minimal time babysitting it. Adjunct to that, I have built several unique apps far quicker than our IT department could possibly accomplish using J2EE (we have several projects through that group that are years overdue and over budget - hence my move to Zope for internal development of critical support functions that can not wait).

        Among the principles behind the Agile Manifesto are several that are instructive:

        "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software."

        "Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage."

        "Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale."

        Zope has helped me be successful with all of the above. How do your tools measure up?
        • All of those are nice, but when I was looking around at solutions for a kind of document management solution, I found all of the Zope sites I tried were kind of sluggish. If your main goal is to satisfy customers then response time has got to be a factor.

          Java has everything you listed, and multiple frameworks to boot - if your J2EE people are so far behind, perhaps they should just be writing servlets, or using Tapestry or Spring or IDE's that help you put together standard J2EE components more quickly.

          P

        • Re:In which world? (Score:5, Informative)

          by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @12:22PM (#10889305)
          What ZOPE doesn't have.

          Ability to publish zope objects with SOAP
          CORBA support.
          Message queues
          Object relational layer
          transaction support for relational databases
          RMI or it's equavalent in python
          Common logging infrastructure (log4j)
          Timed services (cron like device for calling certain code)
          Naming directory. .... Many Many more thing that are in J2EE but not in zope.

          But what it lacks more then anything else is good documentation. Yes there are lots of products but the vast majority of them have no more then a one sentence explation.

          FInally a plea to whoever is reading this.

          I hate Java, please please please build a J2EE like container for python or ruby make sure it has everything I have listed above.
          • Killjoe wrote:

            What ZOPE doesn't have.

            Ability to publish zope objects with SOAP
            CORBA support.
            Message queues

            SOAP and CORBA are data transport protocols. What would stop you from writing a product in python to handle these formats? Message queues are a physical implementation of those protocols. Again, you can implement your own queues in python (or any other language for that matter) This can be handled external to the Zope framework and passed into Zope via external methods.

            Object relational layer

      • Re:In which world? (Score:5, Funny)

        by smcdow ( 114828 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:09AM (#10888569) Homepage
        ... and use CORBA mappings ...

        Some people, when confronted with a problem, say, "Let's use CORBA."

        Now they have two problems.

    • Re:In which world? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by golgotha007 ( 62687 )
      I am lead developer (well, the only developer) for a major website (+half million page views per day).

      When the owners of the website first came to me, they basically had a team of developers who worked around the clock to maintain the old website which was running JSP and Oracle on a total of 5 servers (I don't know the proc, mem, etc).

      The website ran like a damn pig and the owners were tired of all the problems.

      Basically, they came to me and asked me if I could re-create the entire website using FOSS an

      • Re:In which world? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mobiGeek ( 201274 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @11:13AM (#10888612)
        Now, what can we conclude from this?
        The only thing you can conclude is that your replaced a bunch of bozos. There is absolutely nothing else you can conclude.

        Give me your PHP/MySQL solution and I bet I can bring it to its knees with a few properly placed bad queries and/or data structures.

        To make any conclusions about technologies based on your one example would be a crime (...though, this is /. after all...)

        • Re:In which world? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by golgotha007 ( 62687 )
          You're right, we (as a group) can't make any solid conclusions from this data. One of the major problems is that I never saw the old code or know anything about the websites previous deisgn.

          However, from my experience, in the future I will always recommend the setup I've already explained because I know it works well.

          Give me your PHP/MySQL solution and I bet I can bring it to its knees with a few properly placed bad queries and/or data structures.

          Of course, bad code will bring anything to its knees, n

      • Re:In which world? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by j3110 ( 193209 ) <samterrell.gmail@com> on Monday November 22, 2004 @12:56PM (#10889679) Homepage
        I think people are seriously misunderstanding the purposes of each peice of software... So I'll give it my best shot to clear it up.

        1) PHP
        For web scripting.
        Do something small and fast.
        Will run fast.
        Won't scale for the strictest rules of scaling.

        2) J2EE
        For everything big, not just web sites.
        Do something large and right, which takes more front time, but much less time to keep up. A good way to program yourself out of a job, easily. (Can be done with PHP, but not really stressed so much.)
        Will run fast, but can consume a lot of resources in the process. If it's running slow, just give it more memory, and learn -Xmx settings.
        Will scale in all senses of the word.

        Now... a little on the scalability...
        1) Load balancers are only 1 section of a huge problem, and you can load balance anything, including LAMP.
        2) Transaction support is new to the M in lamp, and no one uses them in the P part. J2EE has a transaction system (JTA) that will combine all your data access into one big happy transaction, on all your resources that support JTA (includes JDBC).
        3) Session state replication is completely absent from LAMP. A server could catch fire in a good J2EE configuration, and when the user clicks submit, they wouldn't even know, because at least two servers will have the users session id.

        Ok... now about why it takes less upkeep in J2EE land...
        1) Specs require backwards compatibility in all new versions. I've had problems with every section of LAMP on this issue, but never on J2EE.
        2) A JSP page is only supposed to display information and forms. There is no logic in it. If you have problems with this, I recommend STRUTS. Some people recommend WebWork or Spring. It's a matter of taste, but STRUTS is still the top dog. In PHP, you have to work hard to not mix the two. I used to do action= in the get to simulate this behavior, but it's still not as good, just workable.
        3) If you want a rich application accessing your data, you can do it through the same CORBA, SOAP, or XMLRPC calls. The newest spec from J2EE allows you to turn a normal function on a Session Bean (EJB) into a web service that can be called from anything, including JavaScript on Mozilla or a Flash animation (I have done this). Since it's calling the exact same method, if the database changes, you only have to update the code in the least number of places possible.

        Features completely abscent from LAMP:
        Good web-service support (you can fake it, but Zope actually does XML RPC for you)
        JTA (Transaction system)
        JMS (Messaging System for asynchronous processing)

        Things commonly thought to be missing from Java, but aren't:
        Easy scripting of SQL (The Java Standard Taglib is far easier to use than anything I used in PHP or Perl, but Zope probably has everyone beat there)
        Speed (the bottleneck in 99% of all software is disk related... If you know how to make a database properly, it will be fast.)

        Genuine concerns with Java:
        Memory consumption.
        Threading on your particular platform.
        Lagged support for the newest features on all platforms.
        Doesn't automatically pool database connections.
        Can be hard to configure properly.
        Requires more knowledge than it lets on.

  • "Not to start another flamewar BUT..." (Score:5, Funny)

    by rleyton ( 14248 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:12AM (#10886724) Homepage
    ...LAMP is much better suited for next generation applications than J2EE?

    Not provocative at all that. No. Not in the slightest.

    I'm sure the flamewar that no doubt follows is merely a figment of our collective imaginations.

  • What the? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Prophetic_Truth ( 822032 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:14AM (#10886731)
    Not to start another PHP vs. Java flame war, but it looks like LAMP is starting to grow up, and that it is much better suited for next generation applications than J2EE."

    Thats like me saying, "Not to offend you, but check out goatse.cx!"

    ITS JUST NOT POSSIBLE TO HAVE IT BOTH WAYS!

    • Re:What the? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by IO ERROR ( 128968 ) <error@NoSpAm.ioerror.us> on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:54AM (#10886879) Homepage Journal
      Not to offend you, but check out mysql.com!

      LAMP is great for what it does, but MySQL has no place in the enterprise. There's way too much important stuff that it lacks. I'm sure the nice folks who run /. can tell you of their many misadventures with MySQL, if they chose to...

      Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find my asbestos suit.

      • Re:What the? (Score:3, Informative)

        by GreyWolf3000 ( 468618 )
        MySQL recently has gained clustering support. Not that I'm contending that this is all that's necessary to be "enterprise ready" but it certainly is progress.

      • MySQL no place? It has many places... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by tizzyD ( 577098 ) <tizzyd.gmail@com> on Monday November 22, 2004 @10:24AM (#10888165) Homepage
        Just like you don't use Oracle to handle a simple little db holding some responses to a recent questionnaire or for a quick little conference, I would not use MySQL for a big data warehouse or SAP deployment. Silly db admins have gotten it into their head that DBs at all levels should be compared equally. That is simply not true. Use what's appropriate where it's appropriate. Don't use C for a quick data analysis tool (try Excel first), and don't develop full enterprise apps using cobbled together MS-Office solutions.

      • Re:What the? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Bob Uhl ( 30977 )
        What I don't understand is the love for MySQL when there is a better alternative available which is just as free and just as easy to use. PostgreSQL is a joy to use, and it actually does what one would expect with regards to referential integrity &c.

  • Let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:17AM (#10886742)
    So you are basically saying: Throw more hardware at an inherently slow platform (LAMP) than to use highly optimized J2EE-servers with s state-of-the-art hotspot compiler?

    • You are simply on crack.

      In this discussion, it is what you are shilling that is the inherently slow platform.

    • He's saying: use a suite of highly-optimized tools (the various LAMP components, most of which are fast and all of which can be replaced with alternatives as necessary) rather than throw more hardware at an inherently slow platform (Java).

      It's all pretty much a matter of what you were brought up with. On the other hand, I'm working for a household-name client now that's banned Java across the board because they got sick of the 'buy more chips' solution to performance problems. Acceptable platforms: LAM

    • Lisp vs. C (Score:4, Insightful)

      by namekuseijin ( 604504 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @08:21AM (#10887274)

      ah, the eternal dynamic/productive/high-level/slow vs static/unproductive/low-level/fast debacle.

      Nice to see the Lisp vs C flame still going strong these days... :)

      Nice to see too both have many intelectual descendents which are very good on their own.

      And finally, nice to see that both sides of the same coin have seen such widespread adoption to this day, proof that more than one way of thinking is a good thing.

      • Re:Lisp vs. C (Score:3, Insightful)

        by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) *
        Uhhh, I think LAMP and J2EE are both flavors of OO/procedural. All of the tools involved are based on C, directly or otherwise.
        Help me understand where the functional paradigm of Lisp enters either side...

  • New /. business model? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dr_d_19 ( 206418 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:19AM (#10886751)
    Seriously, is the flame war the new source if income? I mean, it sure increases the number of banner views. Let's report on a new emacs-version, citing it as "far less potent than the newer VI. also notepad K1CK$ aSS".

  • Where to go ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KingRamsis ( 595828 ) <kingramsisNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:20AM (#10886755)
    Slashdotters help me with this; on the right I have an over-engineered J2EE with a dozen of work arounds that are over hyped like EJB facades and dozens of frameworks that are difficult to learn and slow (..and kinky, every one and their mom developed a framework), and there are no free (as in beer) quality servers (I know JBoss but good luck without the documentation), on the extreme left I have LAMP, a loosely coupled system, PHP is popular but lets admit it is an ugly hack just looking at PHP5 reconfirms my believe that PHP didn't handle it fast growth properly, in the middle there is Microsoft which I hate and don't want to consider., I want a decent middle ware, that is cross platform, fast, and well documented, free as in beer (and preferably as in speech also).

    • Re:Where to go ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Enygma42 ( 301776 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:29AM (#10886797) Homepage Journal
      Java is well suited for middle-ware too. You don't have to install a big heavy duty J2EE server and enterprise level DB server. Tomcat & MySQL does the job just fine for smaller operations.
      Take a look at O'Reillys "Better, Faster, Lighter Java"
      http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bfljava/

      IMHO Java scales very well, from small prototype projects right up to enterprise level apps. PHP is fine for the smaller stuff but I'd rather poke my eyes out with a white hot needle than develop and enterprise app with it.

      • Re:Where to go ? (Score:5, Informative)

        by JavaSavant ( 579820 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:14AM (#10886959) Homepage
        Who needs EJB when there's Hibernate http://www.hibernate.org/ [hibernate.org] and Spring http://www.springframework.org/ [springframework.org]. Persistence, Transaction Management, and SQL generation in one tidy package. And it works on any J2EE app server, no matter how lightweight or robust.

        Not that I have qualms with any attempt to provide these services in PHP. It's not a matter of having just one tool in your toolbox, but rather knowing which tool is right for which job. My only response to the original poster is "I don't want to start a flamewar, but if you aren't a sound enough engineer to know when to use which tool, you pretty much suck."

    • Re:Where to go ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:51AM (#10886864) Homepage Journal
      Slashdotters help me with this;

      Allright then...

      and there are no free (as in beer) quality servers

      Apache Tomcat.

      (..and kinky, every one and their mom developed a framework)

      Doesn't mean you have to use them all.

      I want a decent middle ware, that is cross platform, fast, and well documented, free as in beer (and preferably as in speech also).

      That's Java.

    • Use Lisp (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:53AM (#10886874) Homepage Journal
      Use Lisp. Seriously. It's one of the oldest languages out there, but it has features that other languages can only dream of (in fact, when other languages improve, they almost invariably get closer to Lisp).

      The language is well-documented. Implementations range from simple interpreters to complex, optimizing compilers (they are on par with C, and sometimes outperform it). It has packages for many purposes, enough to implement Yahoo! Store at any rate.

      People complain about the parentheses (some say LISP is short for Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses). That's a valid point. In C syntax, at least there's variation. Besides parentheses there are curly braces, straight brackets, commas, semicolons, etc. Seriously, the parentheses make for a very simple and consistent syntax.

      Lisp allows you to program in whichever paradigm suits you best (pick the right one for the task at hand). Functional, object oriented, imperative, it's all there. It's macro system is so powerful it lets you basically generate programs, rather than writing them. Add garbage collection, higher order functions, dynamic typing (although static typing can be used for performance), arbitrary precision arithmetic (integers are not limited to 32 bits), multiple inheritance, and tail call optimization (recursion in constant space), and you have a language that blows all others out of the water.

      Why does nobody use it? Fear, uncertainty and doubt. People think it died with AI. People think its old, so it won't be up to modern tasks. People can't get over the parentheses. The boss won't approve it. Nobody else uses it, so it's hard to get support. Any number of reasons.

      • Re:Use Lisp (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:00AM (#10886897)
        Why does nobody use it? Fear, uncertainty and doubt. [...] People can't get over the parentheses. The boss won't approve it. Nobody else uses it, so it's hard to get support.

        You know, I think those were all pretty valid reasons. ;-)

      • Re:Use Lisp (Score:3, Interesting)

        by namekuseijin ( 604504 )

        I agree.

        Don't know why the hell people modded this funny. It is very serious. But then again, most of the code-monkeys enterprises like to hire for quick hacks for low salaries wouldn't ever be able to use nor understand Lisp.

        Of course, VB lusers can laugh at Lisp, since they don't understand it, but some very large companies use Lisp as the base for their systems, like Intercontinental Airlines (using C++ like assembly for critical sections) and Yahoo.

      • Re:Use Lisp (Score:4, Insightful)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @09:17AM (#10887600) Homepage Journal
        Lisp needs an application server like Zope. Zope has driven many to learn Python so they can create Zope products.

        • Re:Use Lisp (Score:3, Informative)

          by heathm ( 174421 )
          Not only has Zope driven people to Python, it has also driven many of us to contemplate suicide... but that is beside the point.

    • Re:Where to go ? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Eric Savage ( 28245 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:09AM (#10886938) Homepage
      Your assessment is unfortunately a common one. Class, repeat after me, J2EE does not mean you have to use EJB. The "dozens of frameworks" is a growing problem, caused by picking bad/inappropriate ones and/or weak architectural management.

      In my experience, as a developer and as a web user, a simple non-EJB java webapp running a relatively mature framework (or not), on something like Resin is capable of tremendous performance, but I'll state that as opinion to try and avoid baiting some PHP flametard into posting how many views his anime forum can handle.

      If you are developing for something that isn't going on a server you run, with a nice simple Java webapp all of a sudden you (or more often someone else) can choose your OS (Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, etc), your DB server (MySQL, PostreSQL, Oracle, etc), AND your web server (Apache, IIS, none, etc). Thats something that MSFT and LAMP-heads don't offer (without compromising their acronym) and something that client IT departments will very much appreciate. A "pure" admin (i.e. one who doesn't consider him/herself a developer), HATES being told by some outside developer to patch their systems, or run something they don't know or don't like.

    • Mason rather than PHP (Score:3, Informative)

      by grey1 ( 103890 )

      Forget about clunky PHP, try Mason instead [masonhq.com]. And use whichever db makes sense for you - for us it's often Oracle but then we've got the DBAs and experience to make use of it (oh and the licences...).

      And sometimes Java (even J2EE) makes more sense than working in Perl. Which is why we do that too.

      Choose the kit of parts that suits your application needs and the skills of your developers. And think about avoiding lock-in to a closed-source vendor. That has always seemed like a big risk for a project.

      • Re:Mason rather than PHP (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Prowl ( 554277 )
        Agreed.

        We started using Mason here and have just not looked back. It has so many useful features built-in for site maintenance, and to top it all it allows me to embed Perl. We put all our application logic in Perl modules, then wrap the site around it using Mason.

        In fact I hereby propose a new meaning for LAMP:
        Linux
        Apache
        Mason
        Postgres

  • Get a fucking grip (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 )
    Some muppet posts a blog and immediately hundreds of millions of dollars investment and countless man hours of work on a mature, strongly adopted platform become irrevelevant. This is pure flamebait.

    The only thing this indicates to me is that Grid/LAMP is going to struggle to gain acceptance in the enterprise because it proponents are idiots.
    • In most cases today it seems that the actual technical merits of some systems have low bearing, instead you go with someone's opinnion. For that you need thing called marketing...

      Regadless how good something new is, people are not going to abandon it as said above. (This is not meant as comment on the relative merits of the two systems)

  • Still no TPC (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dras ( 153525 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:22AM (#10886767)
    For the majority of enterprise projects I've worked on, we wouldn't event consider a platform that didn't perform Two Phase Commits (MySQL) nor supported distributed transactions. This stuff still has a long way to go before it's to be taken seriously.

    • LAMP (Score:5, Insightful)

      by slittle ( 4150 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:59AM (#10886894) Homepage
      Substitute Postgres or whatever to taste, but that just fucks up a perfectly good acronym, so we'll pretend MySQL is a placeholder for $REAL_DATABASE of your choice.

    • Re:Still no TPC (Score:3, Informative)

      by GreyWolf3000 ( 468618 )
      Clustering support has recently been added to MySQL.

  • I haven't RTFA, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zangief ( 461457 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:25AM (#10886778) Homepage Journal
    Can you use Postgres instead of MySQL in LAMP, without extreme pain?
    --
    Wiki de Ciencia Ficcion y Fantasia [uchile.cl]

  • Do not equate JAva to J2EE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trinition ( 114758 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:27AM (#10886786) Homepage

    Not to start another PHP vs. Java flame war, but it looks like LAMP is starting to grow up, and that it is much better suited for next generation applications than J2EE

    (emphasis mine)

    Remember, folks, Java is more than just J2EE and J2EE is only a part of Java. There are many enterprise applications written without the cancer that is J2EE. There a great number of alternative frameworks for building enterprise applications.

    Personally, I feel that J2EE justifies itself because the bloat of a J2EE server means you have to have multiple instances to support an equivalent load a non-J2EE solution could handle on a single server.

    • Re:Do not equate JAva to J2EE (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CountBrass ( 590228 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:14AM (#10886961)

      Personally I think you're wrong. J2EE is great if you need the features it supports: JMS, distributed transactions, database connection pooling, jsp/servlets etc etc.

      Now if you'd said "EJB", which is only a part of J2EE: and by far its worst part, then I'd have agreed with you. EJB is the epitome of what happens when something is designed by committee.

  • Slashdotted. (Score:2, Informative)

    by edooper ( 541467 )
    Hope they don't run this on a LAMP server...

    Anyway, here is TFA:

    http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:AXRoWhcH5UIJ:ww w.looselycoupled.com/blog/lc00aa00074.html+&hl=en& lr=&strip=1 [66.102.9.104]

  • RTFA (Score:3, Funny)

    by aled ( 228417 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:33AM (#10886814)
    "Of course, calling its platform an application server is something of a marketing ploy since, as Peter has explained, an application server is the last thing you need. What ActiveGrid is really providing is a highly tuned "text pump" to occupy the fabric/bus space in a transaction-intensive enterprise data center."

  • Translation? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jacques Chester ( 151652 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:33AM (#10886816)
    I tried every online translator I could, however the article still comes out as absolute gibberish.

    What with the concurrent text pump synergies, next languages, impedance mismatches and grid quantum antipolarity trilithium subspace continuums, I got a bit lost.

    Anyone understand what they're peddling?

  • LAMP may be fine for web-based applications... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by altgrr ( 593057 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:34AM (#10886819)
    ...but doesn't it seem a little silly to base computational applications on what is essentially a glorified webserver? Sure, use LAMP for your shopping cart, but enterprise applications are more than just shopping carts.

    "There is no impedance mismatch, everything talks SOAP/HTTP" - well, yes, that's great, but you shouldn't be talking SOAP/HTTP internally. There are faster means of communication, so use them.

    "Apparently what is needed is a language/environment that is loosely typed in order to encapsulate XML well and that can efficiently process text" - only on input and output. In intermediary stages, you should be using a much more efficient format. If you're doing something clever, it's going to involve much more than just plain old text.

    "J2EE and .NET applications were never designed with grids in mind" - well, I can't speak for .NET, but J2EE is designed for clustering and distribution. Have you seen EJBs? EJBs are designed for interaction across computers.

    RTFA and you'll see that LAMP is being pushed for "text-pumping". Why aren't they saying it's any good for anything else? Because it most likely isn't.

  • Scripting languages suck (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Can any fan of the Perl, PHP, or Python explain why they are better than java or C# for LARGE applications? Strict type-checking is extremely useful, and I believe essential, for large applications. With strict type-checking and OOPS, the compiler does a lot of the work to ensure that the correct objects are passed to functions and that they are initialized, etc.

    But with any scripting language, you have to run the application to catch even trivial bugs like misspelled methods and incorrect argument type

  • Sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:43AM (#10886846) Homepage Journal
    Ok, I had already spent a modpoint in this topic, but I realized it is better to speak up to defend your position than to stand on the sides and give out points to "your" team.

    Article is Slashdotted, so I can't comment on the content, but just to reply to some of the posts that will defenitely come up, because they ALWAYS come up when Java is discussed-

    EJB are bloated etc:
    J2EE is does NOT equal Enterprise Javabeans. J2EE contains classes for lots of things. XML processing, messages, web servers, database connectivity, etc. You don't have to use EJB. Lots of Java developers don't like EJB because they are too cumbersome, and there are plenty of alternatives. Check out for instance O'Reillys recent book Better, Faster, Lighter Java [oreilly.com].

    Java is slow:
    Startup time for the JVM is still slow yes. This rarely matters for a web/application server. When it comes to running, it is plenty enough.

    It isn't open source:
    So what. It's close enough.

    Ok, that over with, was this darn topic necessary? I like both LAMP and Java. They have their uses, why did the poster and the article have to turn this into a confrontation?

  • More marketing hype (Score:3)

    by standards ( 461431 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:44AM (#10886849)
    Check out this blog entry in Loosely Coupled about ActiveGrid's new open source Grid Application Server based on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) stack.

    I love marketing hype like this.

    One sure sign of marketing hype is to quote a venture capitalist on technology. That's why we all don't own a Segway, despite its claimed "future".

    Second of all, a technical paper shouldn't be based around a press release that quotes the same venture capitalist. Not too many technologists will take that seriously.

    Next, don't bring the NetDynamics CTO near me. Maybe he's a good guy and all, but in my experience, NetDynamics was one fucked up product. And this was before AND after Sun gobbled them up. It was like the Marketeers and Experimentationalists got into it, forgot that it was supposed to be an enterprise product, and screwed it to hell.

    Finally, a combination of Perl, PHP, and Python for a complicated enterprise app isn't going to win any awards - damn, how many specialists does one need?

    Finally, I'm not going to be running my payroll on a core of MySQL, PHP, Python, and Perl. And which version of Apache? 1.3 or 2.0? Perl 6? Why isn't ksh in there?

    I love people that seamingly have ZERO large, enterprise-class application experience telling those who do how to do it.
  • While I like Java, I have never been the greatest fan of J2EE for web applications, it's just over engineered.

    But J2EE does more than just web apps. It's strength is being a business application server with Swing GUI front-end, the only competition in that field is .NET, and we know what platforms, or rather platform, that is supported on. The added bonus in that case is that it is dead easy to create a web application accessing the same systems. Try that with LAMP!

    A fairer comparison would be LAMP and JS

  • Flamewar (Score:5, Funny)

    by pigeon ( 909 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:04AM (#10886916) Homepage
    "Not to start a flamewar, but you java developpers are a foul smelling, foul tasting bunch!"

  • Laughing all the way! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:09AM (#10886937) Journal
    I didn't even know there was a PHP and Java flamewar going on! Where do I enlist?

    No seriously, it is like comparing apples and oranges. PHP and the wonderous LAMP stack (I have just heard about it, so that is the first stumbling block for its adoption! many companies like to be fast followers) might be able to do what Java does if you look at output, it might even be quick, but that has nothing to do with the costs and development and staffing that real people with real money care about.

    Java has a huge demand in industry that is being met with huge interest in terms of capable candidates which is proven by the number of successful and *bearing in mind this isn't a flamewar!* well written open source project out there.

    The level of Java competency in the industry is growing enormously as a result, which is a good thing. PHP is also good, and I like PHP, lets not get things mixed up here.

    [snip = list of reasons why people choose java, which was boring even me]

    Also J2EE is *the* platform for applications running for thousands of users, on machines with 90+ GB of ram, and 24 processors just to handle the data requirements.

    Oracle love J2EE. Oracle is a fairly decent enterprise (not just performance, but support and board level confidence) db to say the least.

    Now, LAMP might be lovely, but why even pitch it against anything, dear LAMP community, just be, don't try and compare it against anything.

    FUD et al.

    PS: erm, nerr nerr? u sux0r? pwned? I am loosing my touch at this internet name calling gaff, time to retire.

  • Ruby on Rails, and Trails (Score:5, Interesting)

    by martinde ( 137088 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:10AM (#10886946) Homepage
    This month's meeting at my local Java user's group [cinjug.org] there was an impressive demo on Ruby on Rails [rubyonrails.org]. The presenter built a blogging application live in front of the group, literally in 10 minutes or so. Prior to this demo I had pretty much written Ruby off "just another alternative to perl or python" but I have to say that Rails looks really impressive, enough so that I'm taking a closer look at Ruby.

    One of the guys in our user's group, Chris Nelson, is building a similar framework for Java - called Trails [theserverside.com]. He also built a blogging application live during the meeting. It took him a bit longer - perhaps 15-20 minutes. It was impressive as well, although I will say that for Trails you need to know a fair amount about Hibernate [hibernate.org] and Tapestry [apache.org]. Realize that he's been working on this only for a few months and suddenly you see that this work is very impressive too.

    Anyone interested in developing web apps might want to check these projects out - very impressive stuff!

  • Whoa there cowboy.. you don't understand. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:11AM (#10886952) Homepage
    Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl

    J2EE is not about the OS, server or database. It's a specification. JBoss (JBass.. heh), Geronimo, Welogic and many others are implementations of it. Some are certified, some are not, like Resin.


    You can run it on many os's, including linux. Apache is making one of the J2EE servers. I'm not sure where databases came into all of this, since it's fairly independent. I.e. w/ jboss, there are data mappings for all of these servers, if you decide to use EJB, which is part of the spec, but not a requirement to use. The last thing is the big ol' P.


    J2EE is a set of technology specs. Things like XML manipulations (JAXB, JAXM), communication "stuff", like SOAP, JMS and JMX, database abstractions, like EJB using JDO, CMP, BMP.. "web stuff", though you can do your own protocols, with the servlet spec. Last I checked, the closes to a spec I've seen is p5ee, which had an interesting run. You had options of what to use, maybe too many, in p5ee, but that was about it. It would have been nice to see a tight binding between everything.

    Anyway.. the LAM in LAMP is irrelivant in this article. I can use Linux, Apache and MySQL with J2EE if I so desired.

  • GAS LAMP (Score:5, Funny)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:13AM (#10886957) Journal
    Grid Application Server based on the LAMP

    So does that make it a GAS LAMP?

    *ta dit boom*

  • Erm, back to basics folks... EE and strings? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:18AM (#10886978) Journal
    So let's look at the requirements for today's corporate applications ... Given these requirements, Java does not fare very well. Apparently what is needed is a language/environment that is loosely typed in order to encapsulate XML well and that can efficiently process text. It should be very well suited for specifying control flow. And it should be a thin veneer over the operating system.

    So we came from string programming roots, we developed OOP and AOP, and now... now we go back to string programming because of xml parsing?

    I find this a worrying trend, you have to understand, an application is state, and behaviour.

    This is trying to tie an application into a 'thin veneer' over an operating system, which seems a bit worrying for an app that will cost a few million to develop in the right circles.

    Be reducing all the benefits of OOP (huge and varied, numerous and wonderful) we seek to define our crowining enterprise applications with an approach from the 70's that would pioneer the use of string processing programming constructs over highly developed and structured powerful programming tools.

    The program isn't the code, it isn't the data, it is the design, the behaviour, the organisation, the people understanding it. All of this becomes very alien to us when we go this route.

    Humanising code is key to developing the kind of applications this company has now touted.

    What is looselycoupled? Anyone read it regularly? is it a valid news source? Is this some free advertising for a fad?

    I am almost tempted to read more about the LAMP, but I just have a knowing feeling it will be another 'cure all' product.

    Yep, tick tick, oops, missed one, back to step 1.

  • Finally! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22, 2004 @07:44AM (#10887091)
    Finally, a break from the Sun tax. Yeah, you know the one -- the one that makes you pour hundreds and hundreds of wasted man-hours into using poorly written programs with little or no documentation. What can you expect from crappy code written by scientists and corporations? I'll happily use code written by hobbyists any day, no matter what News for Nerds declares. Honestly, I know most of you agree with me!

  • Just tools, use them accordingly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AwesomeJT ( 525759 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @10:13AM (#10888075) Homepage
    I use all of the above technologies, depending on the needs and what I am trying to do.

    For large scale projects, I use Java. It is great Object oriented language that I can use to the fullest extent. I can get very close to that MVC pattern that is soo useful in large-scale projects. I don't use EJBs -- not needed them yet. I use the JMS, WebServices, JSP/Servlets, etc. We connect to a real database (DB2). J2EE offers a completely different scale with work with. You can do everything from simple web applications to clustered app servers at several levels.

    For smaller stuff, I like LAMP fairly well. It is simple and easy to get started, although not great for larger projects (code reuse, management, scaleability). MySQL, again, nice and fast for small stuff. I perfer PostgreSQL because of the power and flexibility. I'm trying to move more towards PostgreSQL especially after recent changes in licensing with MySQL. For these projects in general, I like PHP over Perl for webpages. Perl is still great for admin tools on the console or for confusing the heck out of folks not familiar with your code. PHP is simple and made for website based applications. Again, I'm not going down that path if I know it will grow into a huge project.

    The deal is, they are tools. The both have their strengths and weaknesses. Evaluate your needs, and choose the best tool for the job. I use both and love both -- but choose wisely.

  • WebObjects Cocoa::Apple should re-release (Score:3)

    by tyrione ( 134248 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @12:38PM (#10889490) Homepage

    Seeing all this about this kicks ass over this rhetoric it is too bad Apple decided to curtail the original WebObjects into Java and not provide WebObjects ObjC and the full-power of EOF and all the extensive frameworks.

    Hopefully, they'll release it and rejuvenate their Enteprise presence, but who knows.

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