Grind up Enterprise Java

THE INQUIRER'S RECENT defence against Burton Group analyst Richard Monson-Haefel's view on enterprise Java's demise, has brought to light an argument for the further sub-packaging of Java.

Java currently comes in three main forms; Standard Edition, Mobile Edition and Enterprise Edition. The SE flavour packages the standard Java core system libraries and various GUI features for desktop application development, whilst ME brings support for mobile interface development and a cut-down core library for memory-constrained devices. The latest EE comes with a plethora of support for web-based applications including Servlets, web-service APIs, Java Server Faces (JSF - an MVC framework), and Entity Java Beans (EJBs), among many other related technologies.

A significant argument of the Burton report against JEE was its increasing complexity, despite Sun's efforts to minimise the bloat in its latest incarnation (in fact it added to it). But any product that wishes to deliver such a complete enterprise development solution is inherently complex, there's never going to be a thoroughly 'simple' solution. Burton's key to argue JEE's demise stated that frameworks such as Ruby-On-Rails would force enterprise development away from Sun's offerings due to their quick, simple development cycle. We've already argued that Ruby and similar new architectures isn't comparing like to like, and won't return to that discussion. What Ruby is actually similar to, is the more simple working implementations of the EE spec - some kind of MVC framework coupled with an intermediary container, and a route to persistent storage.

This type of system utilises a very small amount of the EE spec and packaging, yet is probably more widely implemented today than any other kind of web application. Think of sites driven by PHP and MySQL, or ASP and Access, coupled with a much more tightly-coupled MVC-based framework. Basically JSPs, your choice of MVC framework and a JDBC compatible database.

This is what's up against the likes of Ruby, and it's not surprising the EE spec looks complex and bloated compared to a light-weight rapid-development web framework.

Sun should package the most-used elements of JEE into a smaller light-weight focused package, say 'JxWE' for 'Web Edition', and separate the least-used, more complex features of EE and keep them in the usual JxEE packaging. Couple this new WE package with some basic, clear-cut tutorials, and standardised components (such as specifically orientating tutorials to use the included-JSF instead of confusing them with the option of several MVC architectures, and some specifically chosen AJAX framework) and Sun should be able to provide a much more attractive, and less-cumbersome, offering.

This provides major benefits to Sun, primarily providing a sub-architecture that appears much less complex and allowing it to compete head-on against the growing competition of Ruby et al. In-turn this will provide it with a greater proportion of new developers, who will then have already begun the development path towards the much more complex world of full enterprise Java. µ

See Also
Death knell for J5EE sounded too early
Java Enterprise may be stone dead soon