WinInsider

There are a few things to consider about Sun J2EE based on Microsoft's .NET Framework before making a software development decision. Learn how to make the right choice by examining the companies and the markets.

Sun has never relinquished its control over the Java/EJB standards (even going as far as pulling them back from the ECMA standards committee). So you certainly have to be willing to place a significant amount of faith in a company that is trading at an eighth of its value from a year ago and has lost four of its key senior executives in the last six months. [Microsoft at the other hand] even with the significant distractions that the Department of Justice has caused Microsoft over the last three years, the corporation has continued to build both quality products and market share. Moreover, it has begun to listen to customers like never before. Witness Microsoft's recent withdrawal of its MyServices initiative and new security battles-both based on customer feedback about concerns over security with Microsoft products and technologies.

J2EE: sacrificing portability (and also limiting the number of available resources on that particular technology) or holding firm on using only portable J2EE features and sacrificing performance. And J2EE's slow adoption of SOAP and Web services has forced vendors to release their own proprietary extensions.
.NET: can make a relatively smooth transition from COM to .NET using the best toolset on the market (Visual Studio .NET) to develop Web services and other XML/SOAP-based applications today.