Sorry to chime in late, and after Mike said not to... I haven't been on this list in a long time either. However, this isn't about .NET vs. CF. It's to respond to Dave's comments.
I know that Dave works in the DC area (please correct me if I'm wrong) and DC is strong into CF with all of the government agencies. That's great, it's a good place to be becuase CF might be cheaper for a government agency to produce website or intranets. I know that they use Solaris a lot, so CF is a good place to be. However, it's simply absurd to suggest that Microsoft is not strong in the enterprise segment. I currently work in Premier technical support for Microsoft supporting ASP.NET and IIS. The list of companies that use ASP.NET reads basically the same as the Fortune 500. I know because I've supported their technical issues, and they do some crazy programming tricks that CF simply isn't capable of, nor can Java do it either. It's not because CF is inferior at what it does, but because, as someone pointed out earlier, .NET can interact with the entire OS. Yes, these features are very important at the enterprise level. Event logging to the System and Application event logs, or a custom log; multiple session state stores; HTTPHandlers that can intercept incoming requests and modify them; .NET remoting; Native support for XML data transformation from the SQL database; interoperability between classes written in different languages; and most of all, enterprise support at a level that cannot be matched by anybody. One of the biggest things that can be said about MS products is that they are supported, constantly. When you have a crash, we can tell you how to capture a memory dump and then tell you exactly the line of code that caused it. When you have a memory leak, we can pick out the exact object that the dev decided there should be millions of and how to work around it. When you need to secure your intranet applications to particular groups of users that exist on your corporate intranet, we use integrated windows authentication with a single sign on and your code can be protected using NTFS permissions. Yes, all of these things are more expensive overall than a guy writing some CF and deploying it to a server. But be assured that the enterprise is where MS is entrenched. Millions of dollars are spent by big companies on our contracts, and it's because they know when something goes wrong, MS will be there to back it up 100%, and we can fix it. There's no level of support like that from anybody else. But even better, we have professional support for the little guy. When you write you own memory leak (and believe me, it can be done using JRUN and CF) we can tell you why that exists as well. Our professional support costs some money ($245) but that's cheap when you have a seriously important application that needs to be fixed NOW. Here are a few companies that I've had cases for, recently: Johnson & Johnson Fidelity Financial ExxonMobil Federal Reserve Back State Government of Masschusettes Parliament of Canada AARP We don't need a list like Ben Forta's. We're big time enterprise, way bigger than Dave would have you believe. We don't count the number of companies using .NET, we don't have to. Just search for the numbers of jobs available, that will tell you all you need to know. - Matt Small >It's always a bit unsettling for me to hear Microsoft products and >"enterprise" in the same sentence, even though I've long believed that they >can work in the enterprise. And yes, you can build mobile, web and desktop >applications with .NET - I'm a big fan of the .NET Compact Framework, >myself. But you're not building one application at that point, you're >building three applications. Those applications might share some common >components, and even some of the same presentation logic, but they'll still >be three distinct applications. And, aside from the web portions, your >Microsoft applications will only run on Microsoft products - you'll have a >heck of a time deploying your .NET CF apps to Blackberries. > >Right now, the enterprise runs Java. CF integrates nicely with Java. You >will simply not find too much .NET in enterprise environments yet. I'm a big >fan of MS products, generally, and I think they're often better than they're >credited to be, but unless you buy into the idea of the "Microsoft stack", >where everything you use comes from Microsoft, you don't really have viable >solutions. Most enterprises have not bought into that idea yet. I don't know >if they ever will. > >Enterprise products are, and have always been, expensive. I strongly suspect >that Adobe would have difficulty selling CF as an enterprise product if they >lowered the price. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Introducing the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. 80 pages of hard-hitting, up-to-date ColdFusion information by your peers, delivered to your door four times a year. http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:254844 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
