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Contender or Champ? Judging Java June 28, 1999 By Don MacVittie Just four years ago, Java was virtually unknown. Now, despite a shortage of skilled programmers and some concerns about its touted portability, most Fortune 500 companies use the language for development. ISVs (independent software vendors) are rushing to provide Java interfaces to their tools. And many companies, including IBM Corp., Oracle Corp. and Lotus Development Corp., are betting their futures on it, with much of their new software development moving to Java. We've written many applications in C, C++, Perl and Visual Basic over the years, and have recently written replacement or add-on applications in Java. Java already runs on most available systems, and boasts development styles that let vastly different projects be implemented in the same language. It can be used to write clients and servers, clients that reside in a browser, command-line programs, Internet servers (servlets) and, most recently, native executables for many different hardware platforms. Using Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.1 and a high-performance Windows compiler, we've created executables that run reasonably well under Windows 95 and 98. Still, this technology is in its infancy; the executables tend to be large and slow, and methods listed by Sun Microsystems as deprecated or obsolete sometimes do not work in compiled programs. With the exception of cases where the Java code was developed in Microsoft Corp.'s J++, the language truly upholds its "write once, run anywhere" claim in every scenario where we've created code. This includes Oracle database access code, chat programs and code to process requests for information, running on platforms as diverse as Windows NT, OS/ 390, Linux, BSD and Solaris. What's more, Sun's implementation of additional standards adds new muscle to the Java powerhouse. Using JNI (Java Native Interface), you can run software written in other languages, which lets you access your legacy code, or drop to another language if you face performance issues. With JDBC (Java Database Connectivity), you can access diverse databases on different machines. ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) allows this only for programs running on Windows. But Java's many competitors are already entrenched in the enterprise, championed by supporters who can point to a record of success in answering corporate software development needs. How does Java compare with the legacy languages in use today, and how well does it handle the types of development you do? Here we compare it to C and C++, Perl and Microsoft's Visual Basic, to see how Java stacks up today.
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