R – advantages of .net over java in Intranet

asp.net-membershipintranetnet

Our company has an intranet with 30,000+ web pages and 160+ web applications. This is being used by 5000+ employees.

We also have internet with 150+ Web applications and 100+ websites. Both the internet and Intranet is 7+ years and they run on classic ASP.

Recently some "Technical Architects" came up with a wonderful idea of migrating from ASP to JAVA and as a result projects which would normally take 2/3 months is taking 6/9 months in java. The reason for this is we have 100s of custom made VB components which are reusable and java team is finding it difficult to migrate all those and they are taking lot of time.

Out of 160+ web applications in intranet, most of them are not available to everyone. Meaning we have a VB component which is used to check the logged in user and allows entry to the particular application. We also have permission management page which allows us to add / remove users to applications (just like ASP memebership control).

I want to show the management that it is easy to move the intranet application to .net by using the .net membership control and "Windows Authenticaion" is better.

Can you help me gather some advantages of using .net for an intranet when compared to java keeping in mind that our existing applications are windows based.

I have gathered some points afetr reading similar questions in SO. But I need some more specific to intranet.

Note: I am not here for an argument about java and .net. java is a wonderful language but looking at these factors to consider before migration its crystal clear that its better to migrate our applications to .net but my "tech architetcs" are taking a wrong decision.

Best Answer

This is very situation dependent. In your situation, if it is as you described, the decision to go to Java was not very well thought through. You obviously have a large investment in the Microsoft stack. I don't think there is a compelling reason to drop all of your legacy code and go through all this pain just to go to Java.

I may get flamed but it is not as if you get that much more power from Java than .NET to justify this kind of pain. I think your current code investment is enough reason to continue with the Microsoft stack. You can interoperatte with COM and all of these things much easier from .NET. Although, admittedly, you would have larger code changes even in going to .NET. It would be an easier challenge though; a lot of your code could live alongside the new .NET code; you would just have to do some work to manage things like Session and all of that.