Weighing the Benefits

The release of the .NET development platform has presented Microsoft’s customers and partners with a fundamental question: how many development and marketing dollars should they devote to the new platform, compared with the resources they apply to the current Windows platform or Java? In making the decision, organizations should consider the following needs:

Reliability and security. The .NET development platform can offer better application reliability and security than the Windows or Java alternatives, thanks especially to the CLR’s prevention of basic coding errors (such as buffer overflows). However, an application is only as strong as its weakest link: a .NET application that incorporates unmanaged Windows code is only as reliable and secure as that code. Java also has a mechanism for calling native code, the Java Native Interface (JNI), but the existing native code must be modified to allow it to be called.

Development costs. The .NET development platform is clearly superior to today’s version of Windows for developing Web applications (especially Web services). It even has significant advantages over Java, thanks to Visual Studio .NET’s sophisticated graphical editors and wizards.