Java vs. JavaScript/AJAX/PHP/etc
 

Hey Folks,

I couldn't get any real conclusion to this on my own, so I figured I'd ask some folks who might know what they are talking about. Here's the problem - I'm working on a pretty big web based application (err.. really big) for officeless offices. I can't get into much more detail than that, besides the fact that its pretty extensive. Think TinyERP/scaled back SAP (best examples I can come up with). The big thing is that this should be browser based, which really isn't an issue in either case I don't think. The other big thing is that there are a lot of things going on, including 'chats', checking email, looking for updates on projects, etc. It has to work on pretty much all desktops, but doesn't have to work on mobile phones - a separate interface was going to be built for that anyway.

So far the javascript 'version' has worked alright, but its becoming very clumsy to add things in. Also, the overhead when running a few dozen test clients is pretty.. big (and this will be running for about 600 clients per day once finished). A majority of the project is based in various windows and panels, lots of data manipulation and server communication. Should I scrap what I have (not a whole lot) and just do it in Java? If so, should I be looking into the Java EE/Glassfish implementation? I personally think it might work out better, but I'm concerned about the design elements that the 'boss' wants (granted, that should never be an issue considering I ought to be able to make it do what I want.. but still).

Anyway, thanks for your time and thoughts!

Stephen

How are you doing chats and e-mails in Javascript? Javascript runs on the browser and can't interface with the server. Are you confusing java and javascript here?

I'm a big fan of PHP. It's powerful and interfaces easily with MySQL and is scalable (I have a database with over 100,000 tables and PHP/Mysql handles it just fine) I think it's ideal for the type of tasks you are describing which seem to be focused on a lot of processing between the server/database and PHP is a ground-up web language with dynamic server/database interaction as the focus.

We're currently using JQuery (ajax) to talk to the server from the browser. Problem is, especially for chats, the polling taxes the system pretty good.