Java or dot net

[Nishant]

Hi,

I have to devlope a windows application with general functionality of
Web Service Interaction, Office Integration and reporting. My
expertise is in both dot net and Java(Only Web application). Now my
Organisation ask me to develope a Window application and they left it
on me to choose the technolgy (either java or dot net).

Can any body tell me which technology I should opt?

I know few things about windows technology developing through Java,
like I need to use swing
for form design but I don't have any idea regarding reporting tool in
Java. Please help me out to make a decision in this dilema.

Please let me know about any specific feature provides by Java for the
windows application and reporting.

Any response will be appreciated...

 

[Tom Anderson]

I have to devlope a windows application with general functionality of
Web Service Interaction, Office Integration and reporting. My expertise
is in both dot net and Java(Only Web application). Now my Organisation
ask me to develope a Window application and they left it on me to choose
the technolgy (either java or dot net).

I don't know anything about .net, but i imagine there's probably not a lot
of difference really.

Can any body tell me which technology I should opt?

I know few things about windows technology developing through Java, like
I need to use swing for form design

Or SWT:

http://www.eclipse.org/swt/

Which many consider simpler to use.

but I don't have any idea regarding reporting tool in Java. Please help
me out to make a decision in this dilema. Please let me know about any
specific feature provides by Java for the windows application and
reporting.

I'm hazy on what reporting even is, but there's nothing in the java
standard libraries for doing it; these seem to be a couple of good
options:

http://www.jasperforge.org/jaspersoft/opensource/business_intelligence/jasperreports/
http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/

tom

 

[Roedy Green]

Can any body tell me which technology I should opt?

One major advantage of Java is you can scale your server, or host it
elsewhere. If you use .net, you must stick with Microsoft in house
servers.

Microsoft is always trying to trick you into writing Windows-only code
even on the net. That is fine if your clients are inhouse and all use
MS, but is going to alienate non-Windows clients if you talk to the
general public.

 

[Tom Anderson]

One major advantage of Java is you can scale your server, or host it
elsewhere. If you use .net, you must stick with Microsoft in house
servers.

If he uses .net for the server side, yes. I got the impression he already
had a server, which exposed a web service interface, and he wanted to
write a desktop client which used that interface. You can write SOAP
clients in any language, and they'll interoperate with SOAP servers
written in any language.

Although, as you say ...

Microsoft is always trying to trick you into writing Windows-only code
even on the net.

Yes. If you use .net for both sides, MS may try to tempt you into using
MS-specific SOAP extensions or something, in which case you'd lose
portability. But temptation can be resisted.

tom

 

[Arved Sandstrom]

On Mon, 16 Jun 2008, Nishant wrote:
[ SNIP ]

but I don't have any idea regarding reporting tool in Java. Please help
me out to make a decision in this dilema. Please let me know about any
specific feature provides by Java for the windows application and
reporting.

I'm hazy on what reporting even is, but there's nothing in the java
standard libraries for doing it; these seem to be a couple of good
options:

http://www.jasperforge.org/jaspersoft/opensource/business_intelligence/jasperreports/
http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/

tom

Reporting is pretty much what common-sense says it is - producing reports. A
JSP displaying a table of information is a reporting tool. The df command is
a reporting tool. The Windows Task Manager is a reporting tool.

Of course, what most people really mean is a program that can produce pretty
tables and piecharts and headers and forms, with the ability to readily link
data sources to pre-defined report templates and suchlike. And ideally the
data would be business data, meant for sales and marketing types, so that
you'll be the 515,443,706th coder to spend 3 days finetuning the border
colors and header fonts on a Units Sold by Region and Month table...rather
than working on less critical things, like why does the server crash?

AHS

 

[David Segall]

Hi,

I have to devlope a windows application with general functionality of
Web Service Interaction, Office Integration and reporting. My
expertise is in both dot net and Java(Only Web application). Now my
Organisation ask me to develope a Window application and they left it
on me to choose the technolgy (either java or dot net).

Can any body tell me which technology I should opt?

I know few things about windows technology developing through Java,
like I need to use swing
for form design but I don't have any idea regarding reporting tool in
Java. Please help me out to make a decision in this dilema.

Please let me know about any specific feature provides by Java for the
windows application and reporting.

As you indicate in your post .NET implies a development environment,
namely Visual Studio. Java is a just a computer language. I was a
refugee from Visual Basic "Classic" to Java and wrote up my
observations on choosing a development environment at
<http://ide.profectus.com.au>. NetBeans has a plugin for iReport
<http://www.jasperforge.org/sf/projects/ireport> and, if you are
developing a web based application, NetBeans has a RAD tool that
provides straightforward Java Server Faces integration.

That said, I'm unable to compare Visual Studio to NetNeans because I
swore never to rely on a Microsoft product again and have not used
..NET. In your position I would probably make the cowardly choice of
..NET because you can blame Microsoft if things go wrong and they are
likely to better for Office integration.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

I have to devlope a windows application with general functionality of
Web Service Interaction, Office Integration and reporting. My
expertise is in both dot net and Java(Only Web application). Now my
Organisation ask me to develope a Window application and they left it
on me to choose the technolgy (either java or dot net).

Can any body tell me which technology I should opt?

Assuming that you us MS Office then Office integration will
be much easier in .NET, because:
- MS has some assemblies for Office interop
- .NET support COM
- .NET DllImport is much easier than Java JNI

(if it is OpenOffice you use then Java is easier)

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

One major advantage of Java is you can scale your server, or host it
elsewhere. If you use .net, you must stick with Microsoft in house
servers.

Not true.

There are plenty of web hotels that offers ASP.NET !

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

As you indicate in your post .NET implies a development environment,
namely Visual Studio.

More or less.

Actually it is possible to write .NET code in SharpDevelop
as well.

Not many do though, but I do !

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

For cross-platform desktop apps, you *could* use .NET -- Microsoft on the
Windows side and Mono on other platforms -- but in such a situation, I'd
just use java.

Mono is a possibility on non-Windows platforms.

But it should be noted that:
- certain Windows specific parts of MS .NET is not implemented
- in general the library is several years behind MS .NET

I would say that the chance of a real world .NET written for
MS .NET on Windows actually running with Mono is small.

If it has to work, then it should be written with Mono
in mind.

(the Java equivalent is gcj and the classpath library)

The reasons are:
* resource limitations
* the fact that MS is not providing a TCK
* the framework API's was not designed with portability as
highest priority

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Or, just use Java.

Yep.

And Java also add some platforms that Mono does not have like
z/OS and OpenVMS.

Arne