Kris Zywicki was nice enough to alert me to this article, "Analysts see Java EE dying in an SOA world." The article states:
"Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) is not going to survive as a major standard programming model in the next five years, predicts Richard Monson-Haefel, senior analyst with the Burton Group, and SOA is part of the reason."
Richard points out the fact that the new requirements of SOA may not work and play well with the way most enterprises will create and implement a SOA. What's more Jason Bloomberg of ZapThink jumps up and down on J2EE at the same time.
"'Java EE's days have been numbered for a while now,' said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, who also sees the main culprit being the increased complexity that comes with each new version."
What’s interesting here is the Java/J2EE has been getting a bad rap lately, specifically with the rise of the Web 2.0 and the popularity of new tools such as Ruby on Rails. Indeed, many Java developers have jumped ship to Ruby, and developers, once religious about Java are moving on.
What is more, SOA seems to have special needs, and many such as Jason are finding that J2EE is much too complex for many, and does not match up to the requirements of most SOAs out there.
"Finally, ZapThink's Bloomberg said the Enterprise JavaBeans/Servlet/Java Server Pages framework doesn't jibe with SOA." ... "However, if you were to set out to create an enterprise-class framework for SOA, you'd build something quite different. You'd build a framework centered on enabling and maintaining the services abstraction layer so critical to SOA. So, while Java EE is well-suited for running platform-dependent services, it is not built for SOA."
While I agree that J2EE has it's limitations in the context of SOA, I also understand that many enterprises have already invested a lot in J2EE, and with press like this, are wondering about the future of that investment. The fact of the matter is that J2EE-based systems will work fine within most SOAs, if designed and implemented properly, so maintaining your original investment should not be an issue.
The larger question is: Does J2EE have a future in the world of SOA? With new development, I don’t think J2EE is the right technology in many circumstances for the reasons Jason states above. However, you need to figure that out for yourself, including current skill sets, existing technology, and technical and business requirements of your SOA.
It will be interesting to see how BEA and IBM react to this recent news. Can you say multiple white papers?
Posted by Dave Linthicum on August 30, 2006 05:56 AM
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