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[TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]

Mitchell Morris mitchell.morris at cingular.com
Tue Jul 3 10:21:05 EDT 2001 
Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote in 
news:3d8zib16g7.fsf at ute.cnri.reston.va.us:

> Alex <new_name at mit.edu> writes:
>> What's EJB got going for it, anyway?
> 
> Buggered if I know.  Perhaps they provide a frictionless method for
> transferring a business's money to consultants.
> 
> --amk

As amazing as it might seem, the Java hype machine wasn't really getting any 
traction until J2EE came along. Now, suddenly, Java has a niche where 
developers and development shops are willing to work around non-portable 
manual-task-intensive vendor lock-in environments that are rapaciously 
priced. Even if you don't see what the big deal is, you do recognize from 
their behavior that they think it is one (I hope).

EJB:Java :: Zope:Python

That is, it is an environment and a framework where the developer provides 
the "business rule" logic, potentially in a dynamically reloadable form, and 
the framework ensures that the rule is applied when the matching inputs are 
supplied. It also provides for applying an object-relational layer over a 
database, with the database-backed persistence being controlled by either 
the framework or the developer-supplied code. As of the latest release, it 
also now provides a message-based event architecture. This means that the 
developer doesn't need to write a huge chunk of their required 
infrastructure, but can press on to the domain-specific bits.

As a side benefit, most EJB containers supply webheads with dynamic page 
generation (servlets and JSP), so it is (potentially) a single point of 
contact to buy/maintain/service everything a company needs to perform nearly 
all their Internet business.

All in all, it's been a pretty big win for Java. Conventional wisdom and 
some non-peer-reviewed studies suggest that Java per se provides very little 
leverage over C++, that the average developer doesn't build Java solutions 
any faster or more bug-free than they build C++ ones, and that selecting 
Java over C++ means you'll need faster processors and more memory because of 
the concomitant runtime costs. In spite of those tremendous disadvantages, a 
shop can deploy an Internet-based thunk of functionality in Java much faster 
than C++ because they can just go buy an application server for Java and C++ 
still doesn't have one.

if-only-it-wasn't-Java!-ly y'rs,
+Mitchell
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