Re: standalone vs. servlet

[Dennis Sosnoski]

I think this is an artificial distinction, Anne. I'd suspect the difference in performance of your SOAP platforms is due more to how they're structured internally rather than to any inherent differences in C++ vs Java. For instance, Java SOAP implementations commonly use reflection to access data in objects, which is always slower than direct access (even with the improvements that have been made in recent JVMs). With C++ this is not an option. That said, there are also other issues that may play into this particular application, such as the better socket handling allowed by C++.

I don't know about the Tuxedo vs app server comparison, though my understanding is that Tuxedo handles only one particular portion of the work that's done by an app server and hence can be heavily optimized for that one purpose. Servlet/JSP engines such as Resin have certainly shown much superior performance vs IIS/ASP in the past, even though IIS/ASP was an "integrated" component of the OS. I haven't seen the latest figures now that MS as adopted a JSP-style compiled code approach for ASPs, so it's possible the advantage has swung back the other way again. The point is that implementation and internal design (not just tuning, which is a last minute attempt to clean up some of the worst excesses of poorly performing code) matter more than the choice of language.

- Dennis

Anne Thomas Manes wrote:

Dennis,

I absolutely agree with you regarding application code. Using well-optimized
code and a good application server, you ought to be able to make a Java
application run at a speed that's reasonably comparable to a C++
application. There's a bigger difference, though, when it comes to
infrastructure code. In my experience, SOAP *platforms* built with C++ run a
lot faster than those built with Java. Just as you won't find a J2EE app
server that can compare with Tuxedo.

Best regards,
Anne

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Sosnoski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 2:18 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: standalone vs. servlet


Anne Thomas Manes wrote:

There's no doubt that a C++ environment will offer higher

performance than a

Java environment. Ask Systinet. WASP for C++ is a *lot* faster

than WASP for

Java. The two environments use basically the same architecture, but C is
just faster than Java. Even so I suspect that it would be easier to make
WASP for Java support massive scalability than WASP for C++. All

you have to

do is deploy it in WebLogic. There isn't an app server comparable to
WebLogic for the C++ world. (well -- there's Tuxedo -- but I

don't know of

anyone who's developed a SOAP platform for Tuxedo yet). But

since C++ is so

much faster than Java, the threshold at which you need a really

high-end app

server is quite a bit higher.

There's no reason for massive speed differences between C++ and Java
aside from developers not knowing what they're doing. Well designed Java
code should be no more than a maximum of about 30-40% slower than
equally well designed C++ code (after loading and initial JVM
optimization). If you're getting worse results than that it's due to
your developers, not to the language/platform.

I've personally replaced C++ subsystems with Java subsystems that did
more work and did it several times faster, while being more maintainable
than the C++ code had been. I've also improved the performance of one
enterprise Java system by a factor of more than 100 in a few weeks work
(most of which was spent convincing the technical management of my
reasons, through a detailed timing analysis).

There does seem to be a tendency for Java developers to write horrible
inefficient code. This may be a side effect of Java features - with
garbage collection behind the scenes, and threads so easy to create,
it's very easy to ignore the performance implications of what you're
doing. Don't blame the platform, though.

- Dennis

Dennis M. Sosnoski
Enterprise Java, XML, and Web Services Support
http://www.sosnoski.com
Redmond, WA 425.885.7197