Capabilities   Visual Basic Migration

If you are looking to make the leap from Microsoft to an open environment like Java, then here are a few points that can be tossed around when discussing the similarities and differences between .Net and J2EE/Java.

It can be said that semantically, J2EE and .NET offer a near identical set of features, but how each one gets to the end result couldn't be further apart.   The most obvious difference between the two environments is .NET's profound integration with Microsoft's operating system.  Therefore, generally an application developed in .NET will run only in a Windows environment.   However, a J2EE application can be deployed on .Net as well as Linux, Mac OS, Solaris and Unix without having to be recoded.

With regards to the J2EE development community, its big, dynamic and active and offers hundreds of open-source tools, such as Hibernate, Ant and JUnit, which are just recently beginning to make their way into the .NET world.   Additionally, with Sun's recent acquirement of MySQL the forecast looks a lot stronger for open source advocates.   The combination of MySQL, OpenSolaris and GlassFish, together with Sun's Java platform and NetBeans communities, will no doubt create a potent web application platform across a wide range of customers working to shift their applications to the web.

There is a lot to consider, and Anubavam will be there to help you weigh the pro's and con's of these two worthy stalwarts.