Microsoft's .NET versus Sun's ONE

NO, its not a match that will be played in ICCworld cup rather this is a conquest that will be held very soon inevery software solution developer company be it large or small, inevery programmer’s mind be it senior or just a novice and at everyplace where programming has something to do, because this is acompetition between two software giants – Microsoft and SunMicrosystems where former has appeared as .NET while later hasintroduced ONE. So, why all fuss about these two, what the heck thesetwo are going to do and what new change they will bring to this world(if any). THAT IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO SEE TODAY.

Every one of us knows that Microsoft and Sunare arch rivals, but at the same time they need some glue to hold theirinitiatives together, a way to communicate their current and futureplans to companies that buy their products. Microsoft .NET and Sun ONEare that glue for each of the companies-the super glue that tries tohold together a lot of information around vision, architecture andproducts.

Microsoft .NET

Microsoft defines .NET as “software to connectinformation, people, systems and devices”. This is a main idea. Butwait, what does it mean, from information to people and from systems todevices its going to affect everything. Yes, its true and that is whyit is said that .NET will have impact on almost every one ofMicrosoft’s products and users.

Now, to connect all these four via software isnot a child’s play. How you can connect a java application being run ona Macintosh with UNIX as an operating system with VB applicationrunning under windows (of course) on an IBM machine. Previously, if youask this question, the answer would be blunt NO WAY but .NET is goingto make it possible. Before going into key features of .NET we need tounderstand how they made or will make this possible. A simple answer is”by following and adopting a standard” and which standard, yes it isXML. So how adopting a standard will make things easy to connect, letme explain with an example, your teacher gives you a programmingexercise of making a program that prints square root of a number (Iknow you are a programmer of Bill Gates’s standard but just suppose fora second) now if you implement this in C++ you will use sqrt() methodthat is defined in math.h header file. On the other hand if you make asimilar program in Java you will use a similar named function sqrt()declared and defined in math class. But while programming in C++ canyou use sqrt() of Java, or vice versa. Your answer would definitely bein negative but think if someone makes a standard math class that canbe accessible and understandable for both the languages and if you havean IDE that understands both.then here you are, using code of onelanguage and employing library file\class of other is not a problem.That is what people at Microsoft did by defining standard classes andintroducing a single IDE using XML standard.

Key points

-Applications connect to each other using XML web services.
-All products Office, Windows and so forth—will move towards reliance on XML.
-.NET Framework and Common Language Runtime (CLR) will serve as the common foundation for all development work done on .NET.

Now it is advisable to define two things, XML and CLR.

XML web services (or simply XML) are definedby World Wide Consortium (www.w3c.org) which is an internationalstandard managing organization. Along with from Microsoft, Oracle, Sunand Borland with many others announced their support for productscontaining XML web services. XML refers to a language that is a childof HTML but advanced in a way that it has more power and extensibilitywith less complexity. It defines a standard way that makes documentsboth human and computer understandable. Now, what people at W3Cobserved was convenience by which the same document is understood byboth humans and machines running different softwares. This was theinspiration and this lead to XML web services which now provides aneasier and standard path to create methods that are understood andexecuted by different vendors’ software at different machines.RMI(Remote Method Invocation), CORBA(Common Object Request BrokerArchitecture) were also the solutions for inter-company interaction buttwo reasons ; one their protocols did not work well over internet, two,programming above is really expert’s job, gave XML web services an edgesince its not only followed all over internet but also its lot moreeasier to program them.

Common Language Runtime is purely Microsoft’sown idea and they says this would give language-independent, objectoriented, virtual machine to programmer helping him to use any languageof his/her choice to create .NET applications in windows environment.

Now how .NET has affected and\or is going to affect Microsoft’s long line of products, this is our next area of focus.

.NET Products

When you visits Microsoft’s website there is along list of products, approximately more than 250, out of which onlygames and computer influence may not be under .NET umbrella. All thebig names MS Office, Visual Studio, Enterprise servers and all ofWindows variants are proud members of .NET force. Obviously we are notgoing to discuss what changes .NET framework has brought into all ofthe Microsoft’s products but we are going to take a look on two orthree.

Visual Studio .NET

Microsoft’s standard Integrated developmentenvironment (IDE) is Visual Studio .NET. Previously we had differentIDE’s for different languages but now Microsoft has come out with a onestandard IDE that will support Visual Basic.NET, C#.NET and C++.NET.Yes! Isn’t wonderful but that’s not all .NET is Visual Studio.NET isoffering you. Not only you can test and debug code of above languagesin a single IDE, you can also use library files of each other aslibraries and components of all the three languages are integrated intoa common set which is called Common Language Runtime enablingprogrammers’ flexibility, extensibility and reusability that was evenbeyond imagination before. Also testing utilities from Rational andMercury are available in this single IDE hence opening ways for thirdparty vendors to make their products .NET compatible. For those who areJava experts, J#.NET is built which also integrates strongly withVisual Studio.NET. Now you have development tool for building windowsdesktop applications, web applications, client-server applications, webservices using four most powerful languages. I know this isprogrammer’s mouth-watering for programmers.

Windows and .NET framework are two foundations of Microsoft architecture

.NET Enterprise Servers

Since adoption of .NET as a standard for allproducts, Microsoft gave a new look to its Advanced Server productline. Those which are among affected are:
-Windows 2000 Server
-SQL Server
-Exchange Server
-Commerce Server
-Microsoft Project Server
-Microsoft Operations Manager

Soon, Microsoft is going to launch Windows .NET Server 2003 in four colors:
-Windows .NET Server 2003, Standard Edition
-Windows .NET Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
-Windows .NET Server 2003, Datacenter Edition
-Windows .NET Server 2003, Web Edition

Windows

Right
now, Windows XP is Microsoft’s standardfor desktop platform while Windows 2000 is Microsoft’s server platformand both don’t have .NET framework installed but soon Windows .NETServer will be released which will be a common platform for both kindsof applications.

One interesting thing that is presented byMicrosoft in .NET is that applications which are meant for otheroperating systems like Solaris and Linux can now be integrated withapplications being run in Windows environment using XML Web services.

Associated Products

Almost all big names in software industry areready to port their products for .NET. COBOL, Eiffel, FORTAN, Perl,Python are joining .NET, in fact Microsoft states that more than 20languages are going to be integrated into .NET soon. For instance, forCOBOL programmers, Fujitsu has launched Fujitsu COBOL that is designedfor porting old COBOL projects into new .NET framework. Similarly,ActiveState PERL has been launched for making Perl integrate into .NET.

Sun ONE

Sun Microsystems is a big name in computingindustry with Java and Solaris as their main products. They havelaunched an Open Net Environment (ONE) recently with somewhat sametargets as that of .NET but let us first see how SUN defines ONE;”Open Net Environment is Sun’s standards-based software vision,architecture, platform, and expertise for building and deployingServices on Demand.” So, what does it mean and what are their targets.Well, first thing which developers of Sun ONE had in their mind wasaddressing the needs of distributed application development, which intheir eyes is the area where whole industry is interested and intendedto work in. The second thing is Sun’s two major products; Solarisoperating system and Java language, both are used not only in webservices but also in customary client-server applications andmission-critical systems as well. Therefore, although ONE has a strongbackbone of XML web services but at the same time they (Sun) has keptconventional applications services in it.

Key Points

-Java is the basis of Sun ONE architecture.
-XML web services are there in both Sun ONE and partner products.
-Sun has remained loyal with its past standard and all the services that were previously provided, are there in ONE as well.

Sun wants to sell software, based on openstandards, to connect all company’s endpoints. Whether these endpointshappen to be huge SunFire servers running Solaris, Windows-based webservers, Windows desktops, Linux machines, or portable devices, Sun canhelp. Sun’s history tells us that company likes to glue firmly with thestandards and this is what they did here as well. Firstly, XML is a keypart of Sun ONE, as you have support for creating objects from XMLdocuments, accessing XML documents, parsing them, formatting XML and soforth. Then secondly, several standards are picked up; HTTP for Webserver, IMAP, POP3 and SMTP for mail server, NNTP for news server etcetra. Then although Java is not a standard for server side programmingbut its distinguished quality of being portable, made it an idealchoice for the same. Also, J2SE provides a robust set of classes forimplementing client-server applications, Java Server Pages, JavaServlet API and Java Beans for developing state-of-the-art webapplications and services.

Products

Now Sun don’t have that much amount ofproducts that Microsoft has, so what they did they moved almost alltheir products under ONE umbrella and even renamed some products toinclude the term Sun ONE. We are putting a spotlight on three products.

Sun ONE Studio

Yes! Here comes rival of Microsoft VisualStudio .NET. This product was initially called Forte but to make it amember of Sun ONE family, it is renamed as above. Like Visual Studio,it’s a single IDE for three languages; Java, C++ and FORTRAN.Obviously, this is a big achievement of Sun that they put in marketsomething that is challenging one of the masterpieces ofMicrosoft—Visual Studio .NET. But at the same time, they are indilemma. Before ONE Studio, Borland’s JBuilder and IBM’s VisualAge IDEwere two top choices of Java programmers, as both Borland and IBM werekey partners of Sun and had continually support Java for long. But nowwhen Sun ONE Studio is in market, this is posing a challenge topartners–IBM and Borland’s products as well.

Solaris

The latest version introduced Solaris 9 is atrue part of ONE. Build on the tradition of a stable, high-endoperating system most appropriate for databases, mission-criticalapplications and Internet infrastructure servers such as Web, e-mail ordirectory-Solaris 9 is a really a good choice for many. But at the sametime, Sun does not require that companies using its Sun ONE productsmust deploy this on their operating system (Solaris) unlike Microsoft!

Java is glue that is tying together different platforms in Sun ONE architecture.

Sun ONE Infrastructure Products

On Sun’s website, there is a long list ofservers that are designed for both infrastructure and line-of-businessapplications. Like;

-Portal Server
-Web Server
-Application Server
-Web Proxy Server
-Integration Server, B2B Edition

Associated Products

Now this is not a problem for Sun, unlikeMicrosoft, this company always has a long list of allies that rangesfrom IBM to Borland and many others. Just to recall, Sun made Javalanguage but IDE for Java was introduced by partner companies;JBuilder, Textpad, VisualAge. So this time also, Sun will go along withits many partners on Sun ONE road.

COMPARING OF .NET TO ONE

Comparison of the two is illustrated in the following table;

There are some points that must be kept in mind before going to any of these two;

-When you are going to .NET, then you arewhether you like it or not, but Windows will be your foundation. Whileif you to the other way, you’ll have more choice and you can make anyoperating system as your foundation to work in ONE.
-If you are in Microsoft’s camp, then you have great flexibility interms of number of programming language available to you (C#, C++,Visual Basic etc.), while although Sun now gives flexibility to use C++in its new release of ONE Studio, but still Java is a core language ofONE.
-If your target is small or medium applications then go for .NET, whileif you are going for higher end application development, then youshould go into Sun’s camp.