Articles : JavaBoutique's Introduction to Java : Q and A :

Choosing the Right Toolset for your Project

Q

Can you break out the toolset percentages you used for your last 10-20 projects?

A

I have two jobs. I work for an investment bank in London and I am the CEO of extropia.com. In each of these lives I have reason to use totally different technologies. The medium is always the message and the technology always follows the project requirements.

At the bank I require:

1. Security
2. Scalability
3. Speed
4. Professional look and feel

I also have at my disposal an essentially limitless wallet for buying the technologies I need. However, I am limited by the existing IT infrastructure.

As a result, I have chosen the following technologies:

CLIENT SIDE

• 80% Java JDK 1.02
• 15% HTML
• 5% dHTML (Intranet only)

SERVER-SIDE

• 60% Java Servlets and Enterprise Java beans
• 30% CGI/PERL
• 10% ASP

DATABASE

• 80% Sybase
• 20% MS SQL Server

SECURITY

• 100% LDAP with Perl and COM wrappers.

WEB SERVER

• 80% Netscape Commerce Server for Production
• 20% IIS for Internal apps only
• 100% Apache for development

HARDWARE

• 90% UNIX
• 10% Windows NT (internal apps only)

As the CEO of extropia, I use a different set of technologies. Extropia is concerned with the average web developer who does not have these technological tools at their disposal. As a result it looks more like:

CLIENT SIDE

• 100% HTML

SERVER SIDE

• 100% CGI/PERL

DATABASE

• 90% Flat file
• 10% Postgres

HARDWARE

• 100% UNIX

WEB SERVER

• 100% Apache

SECURITY

• 100% Server security

Q

Also, where are you located? Based on your knowledge and obvious expertise, I was wondering if you do on-site consulting? I am in the Philaelphia area. I was wondering what your fees were...thank you so much for your help. I am new to the software industry and am TRYING to work with these types of technologies for the first time. I am not a developer or programmer in any way, I'm a project manager and am trying to get a grasp of these technologies.

A

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I really could not take off much time from my work. I am pulling insane shifts as it is just to get everything done... the thought of missing a day of work would be too devastating :)

Selena Sol contributes to the JavaBoutique's Introduction to Java. Selena curently works for Barclays Capital in London, one of the leading global investment banks in Europe and has worked as a software developer for the National Center for Human Genome research, Microline Software, Neuron Data, and Electric Eye in Singapore. Selena is perhaps best-known for creating the Public Domain Web Script Archive (Extropia) and writing several books on Web Programming (Perl, CGI, Java).
Email: selena@extropia.com

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