Posted on 03/26/2004 10:46:39 PM PST by Bush2000
Eh? On what planet? They both suck about equally. .NET/C# is better than Java in some areas, and Java is better than .NET/C# in other areas. Basically a wash.
And neither environment is "all that", in part because both have somewhat defective programming models. Microsoft fixed some of the defects of Java, but then introduced their own bits of idiotic design. Neither is a magic bullet, nor a real "programmer's language".
Microsoft has never developed a database for anything other than toy hardware to date. The other guys have been building databases for huge non-stop ccNUMA systems for ages. SQL Server is "adequate", but I would not trust it for mission-critical purposes, mostly because it only runs on an OS that is not suitable for mission-critical purposes. If it ran on another OS that worked on larger hardware, it would be a viable contender.
Microsoft's .NET is write once and run once but in almost any language you like. I happen to like C# but there are a lot of VB fans out there. In my opinion .NET is just better than Java in part because it has a target hardware platform (as opposed to the Sun write once debug everywhere strategy for Java) but also because Microsoft obviously learned a lot from studying the good, bad and ugly of Java. I built a very sophisticated .aspx website as my learning exercise for ASP.NET and C# and I have shelved my Java stuff for ever.
I am very familiar with the basic capabilities of most current database server platforms; it is my business to know where these things top out and what they can do.
Windows is still a mediocre server platform for anything but the low-to-mid range. And even within that range it has some pretty stiff competition. I have yet to see any version of Windows in our data center that has its uptime determined by hardware. Any database platform that can't be fully online 24x7 for at least a year at a time under all circumstances is not a platform that I can use.
Again, I don't blame SQL Server per se. Windows is still not an adequate OS for true mission-critical enterprise database work. I have my complaints about Oracle too, but at least it runs on scalable hardware and bulletproof operating systems.
Incidentally, if I needed to choose an enterprise RDBMS platform that had to be absolutely positively bulletproof and run non-stop for something like 5 years without so much as bouncing a process, it would have to be PostgreSQL on FreeBSD (or even an appropriately conservative Linux kernel if I needed real hardware scalability). Not only is it blazing fast for small to medium loads, it is the most bulletproof and patch free RDBMS I've ever used in a production environment, and I've used most of them.
Oracle needs to watch out for Postgres, it is becoming very good extremely fast, and is feature rich. The next revision (due out soon, or so I've heard) will allow it to scale to very large hardware, including some that SQL Server can't run on, and extreme OLTP loads (as well as a native Windows port I'm told). Mark my words, in five years Postgres will be to the database market what Apache was to the web server market. I was skeptical when first introduced to it since I am accustomed to huge SQL Server and Oracle installations, but have since become delighted with the quality and capability of it. It can't replace Oracle yet for all purposes, but one can definitely see that day out on the horizon.
Windows Datacenter Servers are certified to a specific hardware platform and those boxes approach mainframe level uptimes. Look at the Unisys ES7000 as an example. It has mainframe level redundancy and reliability and scales to 32 CPUs and 96 PCI slots. In testing I am familiar with, it smoked an E10000 in every category.
Ewwww. Let me repeat that: Ewwww.
You are using the ES7000 as the paragon of performance?! It is a monstrous piece of crap. Just so you know, I don't have kind words for the E10k either (decent architecture, really slow processors), but the ES7000 is pure garbage. For most interesting applications, it has no purpose. Color me dumbfounded that you would even bring up such hardware. It is a PC on steroids.
Cluetime: Show me a comparison against REAL hardware, not half-baked crap and uselessly narrow benchmarks. The first time Windows will run on genuine scalable architectures is when Microsoft releases a 64-bit Windows designed to run on Opteron systems in ccNUMA native mode. Yeah, its coming, but they've got exactly nothing now. If you want to fan the flames, Linux has been supported on 256 processor SSI on large-scale ccNUMA for a while now, not on an abomination of a 32 processor UNISYS system. Egads.
You have no concept of system architecture nor what constitutes real scalability. And fancy hardware is no substitute for quality OS software, which was my real point in the first place.
It is pretty funny to see a clueless moron assume I'm a Unix guy. I'm a Windows guy; I learned Unix in the trenches. I currently have, or have had, large servers running just about every major server OS in my data centers at one time or another. Right now, that is mostly Microsoft and Linux. Linux runs on the mission-critical hardware.
Fact: On any hardware you can run Windows on, someone can run Linux. Fact: There is a lot of really scalable hardware that runs Linux but doesn't run Windows. Nor is there any Microsoft product of equivalent scalability. Fact: On any given hardware, Linux, FreeBSD, and a few other operating systems have superior operational reliability. Unix may not be easy to use for the point-n-drool crowd, but I'll be damned if it doesn't work every time.
I need systems that work, absolutely positively every time. The old Big Iron companies were a little expensive in the bang for the buck department, but Linux largely fixed that. To reiterate a point I made earlier: No version of Windows, Data Center or otherwise, has ever been able to reliably stay fully online 24x7 for years on end in my experience. I can buy this kind of reliability on the same hardware. So exactly why should I use Windows again? Where we use it, it is largely because we have no reasonable alternative.
Clue phone for you: Windows Data Center Edition runs on custom high-end hardware. You can't buy Data Center Edition separately. It's a package deal with the hardware platform, and it comes with uptime guarantees that will more than match whatever your overpriced contracts with Sun and IBM are providing.
Sorry buddy, I have some of that hardware. Yeah, the hardware is great, but what about the software? We do better than five-niner uptime on our Linux systems, the FreeBSD network cores run essentially forever, and our database servers pretty much just run. My problem isn't the hardware, but the software. Constant patching of any type is not an option because our systems can't stop (note: this is my biggest complaint with Oracle -- all the bloody patches).
The fact remains that of all the hardware and operating systems in our data center, the Microsoft ones have the worst uptime and require the most hand-holding. It has nothing to do with the hardware. Even most of our cheesy and cheap hardware runs for years without failure.
When Windows runs as rock-solid as Linux (or Solaris, or half a dozen other OSen), maybe we can talk. But until then, you can thank your lucky stars that the US infrastructure runs on something OTHER than Windows. Windows Data Center Edition is only "good" compared to other versions of Windows. It is still playing catch up with most of the rest of the operating system universe.
Boring flame, you've done much better than that in the past. Try harder next time.
How 'bout we discuss some of the fatal flaws of .net?
.net gains a *small* performance bonus in certain operations (on Windows only) by tight coupling with the OS.
.net's entire architecture is built on the concept of integration, as if they've missed the entire lesson of OO -- componentization is the key to quality solutions.
This hasn't been debatable for years, it's absolute truth proven dozens of times every day. MS does know this, but their goal was Windows lock-in, so they ignored sound architecture and went with what would profit them the most.
For marketing reasons -- because the real point of .net is to protect the Windows marketshare -- MS chose tight integration. This guarantees reliability, scalability and robustness issues. It's not debatable any longer, there's too much experience under that bridge. Anyone arguing for integration is just no good at this stuff, period.
Which alone should tell an intelligent reader all they need to know. MS built .net to suit *their* needs, *their* agenda -- protecting the Windows marketshare. They didn't build a better dev environment that suits the developers needs, they built a system where every developer in the world, regardless of language, can lock themselves into Windows.
I absolutely encourage all my competitors to base their business on this technology. I think it could be a winner -- for me.
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