If there was a Control panel / Webhosting manager written in JAVA (it must run as root/administrator); Would you use it?

Probally not if your talking about a program to manage clients, a control panel, i think ensim 3.1 changed from python to java, so yea.

I think you are asking the wrong question. People do not make purchase decision based on what language the software is written in. They purchase based on the feature, speed, and reliability of a product.

If you software is good, I will use it even if its written using LOGO.

Just to give you an idea, h-sphere is written mostly in java.

Peter

The score is tied at 1-1-1-1

What's the point of your post, IT Hosting?

I fail to see the purpose of it.

Peter

Originally posted by AnonymousCow
If there was a Control panel / Webhosting manager written in JAVA (it must run as root/administrator); Would you use it?

Sure, if was better than CPanel. Like Peter said, the language itself isn't really a deciding factor -- it's the features, reliability, etc, that count.

This poll comes from the idea that JAVA has several distinct advantages, yet it also carries several disadvantages.

JAVA would allow a control panel to run on many different systems without much modification. Obviously a control-panel relies on quite a bit of system-specific data, but it WOULD speed development and porting to multiple platforms.

However, many people believe that JAVA is too "high-level".. that running a JRE (java run-time environment) as a administrator/root is a security risk due to how high-level it is.

In layman's terms, a control panel in JAVA may perform 10x the number of functions as a control-panel written in another language.. More functions can possibly result in more exploits and security bugs.

The question is, would you trade speed and a little bit of security for having your control-panel run on both Windows and every flavor of Unix and MacOS?

Originally posted by AnonymousCow

The question is, would you trade speed and a little bit of security for having your control-panel run on both Windows and every flavor of Unix and MacOS?

I know that Java is very portable, I'm pretty well versed in it myself, but really, so many of the things that a control panel does are specific to the OS. I don't see how writing a control panel in Java would make it significantly more portable.

That said -- yes, I would trade a little bit of speed and a little bit of security if it meant I could run it on every flavor of Unix -- given that it was a reliable control panel with many, many features.

Originally posted by AnonymousCow
JAVA would allow a control panel to run on many different systems without much modification. Obviously a control-panel relies on quite a bit of system-specific data, but it WOULD speed development and porting to multiple platforms.
Writing it in C(++) would also accomplish a similar task and not require any problems Java would introduce. In my opinion, C(++) would be the best. Although, any language would really do it, as has been mentioned, as long as the features, functionality, and security is in place.

I don't think there are many exploits from java as you have put it. Java is a very secure language, even more so than C/C++. If you write your control panel in it, the default level of security is going to be higher, not lower.

Of course, if you implement your java program insecure (e.g. allow login to admin cp without password, allow abitrary uploads, stupid things like that), then the CP will be insecure, The same could be said of any language.

I don't think your "high-level" analysis of java is really appropriate. You can't use general statements like "Java is high level", "high level is bad and insecure," therefore "java is bad and insecure." This just doesn't make sense. I think you really need to spend sometime working with the Java language to really get a feel of it, instead of making conclusion out of context.

Peter

Originally posted by allera

Writing it in C(++) would also accomplish a similar task and not require any problems Java would introduce. In my opinion, C(++) would be the best. Although, any language would really do it, as has been mentioned, as long as the features, functionality, and security is in place.
Alex, I don't see how writting a control panel in java could introduce any problem that isn't present with C/C++. If anything, the unsafe nature of C code probably makes for worse security.

Anonymouscow, I am really curious on your claims. Do you mind elaborating on that? I am a java programmer, so you don't have to put it "in layman's term."

Peter

Originally posted by AnonymousCow

.....
However, many people believe that JAVA is too "high-level".. that running a JRE (java run-time environment) as a administrator/root is a security risk due to how high-level it is.
....
More functions can possibly result in more exploits and security bugs.
.....

Specifically, how is "high-level" a security risk?

And, on what basis do you make the claim that more feature == more bugs? (ok, it is true, but it is almost a meaningless statement, just like saying: "My HelloWorld program is bug free!")

Peter

Originally posted by ckpeter
Alex, I don't see how writting a control panel in java could introduce any problem that isn't present with C/C++. If anything, the unsafe nature of C code probably makes for worse security.
That sentence came out a little funky. It meant to read:

"Writing it in C(++) would also accomplish a similar task and not introduce any problems Java would, if any at all."

I was going off what Anonymouscow stated about security problems Java has, but since I don't think there are any security problems, I (should've) added "if any at all."

Been up too long today...

I see. I get it now. Thanks for the clarification, Alex.

Peter

Speaking from experience as our company have develope a J2EE based control panel for our resellers and their clients, JAVA is a major resource hog.

We had to upgrade our machines just to keep Tomcat and Jakarta happy. We built it around the FreeBSD environment so we weren't able to port it over to any other flavours of LINUX quickly as they use different commands to execute at the command line.

You'll still be restricted with any language you go, whether it be PHP, PERL, or JAVA. JAVA will of course run on other flavours though the command line usage to administer a server is different.

The only benefits I can see from using JAVA is security. However there's alot of overhead with JAVA and really more suitable for enterprise web hosting companies and not really for the average small - midsize hosting company.

I don't ever recall any major security holes in a control panel written in PHP or PERL. The only security hole is when the programmer is so lazy to turn on all notices and use vigrous strict checking and use regular expressions to check all arguments.

Personally, I think developing a control panel developed in JAVA puts too much overhead in the development cycle which in turn, cost to develop will be passed on to the consumers to pay the high priced JAVA programmers to develop such a control panel.

Xanthis wrote:
" Speaking from experience as our company have develope a J2EE based control panel for our resellers and their clients, JAVA is a major resource hog. "

Which is exactly why I would be concerned.

"The only benefits I can see from using JAVA is security."

Several have expressed their opinions that they believe that JAVA is secure. This opinion is very good for anyone wishing to make a control panel with it.

There are several factors to consider. A programming language like JAVA, PHP, Perl, or TCL will certainly aid you in writing secure programs as they provide a little more sanity checking then C/C++ does.. However, all 4 of those languages listed above are interpreted and require interpreters; C/C++ can be compiled directly into machine-code which eliminates the possibility of having a faulty intepreter. Thankfully, the authors of these interpreters are pretty keen on security and bugs in such software is somewhat rare.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that many of you are not against JAVA for such an application.

It looks like my company will provide a JAVA-based daemon for it's new control panel. I would like to mention that due to the unique design of this new control panel, on (fully) supported platforms there will also be a native-port written in C++.

In response to those saying that a control panel requires a lot of code specific to a platform, this is very true.. However, the differences between Unix systems is not *that* great. Microsoft Windows is another story, but that doesn't mean that it cannot share SOME code, especially if one uses Cygwin for compatability.

Try switching to older JServ, or to Resin from tomcat. Tomcat is very bad in terms of handling high load. We tried it as well, and decided to go back to JServ, as it was not been able to handle anything about 100 hits / sec., with any improvements we were trying to do, on an pretty high end hardware.

Originally posted by ckpeter
Just to give you an idea, h-sphere is written mostly in java.

Peter

I wonder if that's the reason why H Sphere runs slower than C Panel or is it because H Sphere is run on a separate server?

You'll most likely find that HSphere runs slightly slower because it has the overhead of dealing with a database for everything, CPanel deals with a few text files - and to a point the text files will be faster, but then you'll find that HSphere (or any system using a database) will scale much better than something using flat files.

Xanthis wrote that Java is a resource hog, but also wrote that his company use J2EE, so I would feel compelled to ask what components where used, because your can have Jakarta run on a rather low-end server without any significant resource consumption as long as you're using J2SE.

Originally posted by AnonymousCow
There are several factors to consider. A programming language like JAVA, PHP, Perl, or TCL will certainly aid you in writing secure programs as they provide a little more sanity checking then C/C++ does.. However, all 4 of those languages listed above are interpreted and require interpreters; C/C++ can be compiled directly into machine-code which eliminates the possibility of having a faulty intepreter.

This is (taken strictly) not correct.

You cannot say that a "language" as such is interpreted. However you can say that, at the moment, only interpreters exists for this and that language.

In fact, programs that convert Java program into "ordinary" executable files do exist.

(The same goes for PHP and Perl - but to my knowledge all they do is embed the virtual machine along with the "raw" program)

It makes no sense to me to use a tool that relies on the browser for interpretation. There is Netscape Java and JVM on Windows; and many other kinds of Java. Now, if the Java can be compiled or interpreted on the server like perl, I have no problem with it; but there are some people that can't or don't wish to download java or perl locally; and I don't think they should be forced to in order to be able to use a tool like this.

... and that's one of the big problems I find with H-Sphere, if you don't have Java loaded locally on your machine, you cannot use it.

Ehh, we're talking about server-side Java, no? There is no Java running on my machine when I use HSphere. It all runs on the server. I just get pretty HTML pages.

Originally posted by chrisb
It makes no sense to me to use a tool that relies on the browser for interpretation. There is Netscape Java and JVM on Windows; and many other kinds of Java. Now, if the Java can be compiled or interpreted on the server like perl, I have no problem with it; but there are some people that can't or don't wish to download java or perl locally; and I don't think they should be forced to in order to be able to use a tool like this.

... and that's one of the big problems I find with H-Sphere, if you don't have Java loaded locally on your machine, you cannot use it.
Chris,

It is server side java, it has nothing to do with java in your browser. It is interpreted on the server, exactly like perl is. You can disable java in your browser, and try H-Sphere demo - you will see it working with no issues .

The only thing to do with Java with HSphere that runs in the browser is JavaScript.

LOL KDA stole the intials I ws thinkin of usin.... :D
What does KDA stand for w you???
I was gonna use it after my kids Kody, Dylan and Austin ;) :D

Srry off topic...

I was wrong again, darnit! :) Thanks for clearing that up. It's good to know that Hsphere uses server-side Java.

Bottom line is functionality..

Java would be great, if the software was designed well.
With a n-tier architecture, such as MVC, it could have several benefits that would take additional development in perl, php, etc..

To make it run on a different os, one of the tiers would just have to be replaced...

A web based client would just be one of the ways the system could be administrated. Adding wml, voicexml, webservices, rmi, would be cake, since all of the logic would be in the core bean.

Adding servers? If done correctly, using JNDI, you could add a server, and it would automatically add itself to the network to provide services.

As far as performance, EJBs work just fine on Jboss, or Resin..
Tomcat may be easy to use, but i'd use Jboss any day (for a free J2EE impl)

Bottom line, I'd prefer a system done in Java, just because the development effort that went into it probably required a good bit of design behind it.

My 2 cents,

Rahul Singh

anantatman, stop giving away my secrets ;)

I am writing an n-tier server platform, of which.. there will be a Control Panel module. Clients can connect to the server platform and access the modules for which they have been authenticated.

Java would not be a terrible choice for the 'server platform', as it would be portable to many systems.. the modules can run on remote systems via CORBA.

Clients can be web-applications, a native program, a java applet, etc.

Well, just a hint: don't use CORBA, use SOAP.

Peter

There is not much difference between SOAP and CORBA. Sure, SOAP can more easily pass through a firewall.. but this application will have little need to do such. One misconception about CORBA is that there is no encryption or that it is difficult, not so.

One thing that IS different is that SOAP is not nearly as hard to learn. CORBA uses binary data transfer, so it uses less bandwidth.

It honestly doesn't matter much if you're using CORBA or SOAP, as long as the job gets done.

Well, I would imagine if you have a client connecting to the controller it would be SOAP based, otherwise firewall could be the issue.

Peter

Originally posted by AnonymousCow
anantatman, stop giving away my secrets ;)



Hehe, its all good.
If anyone understood all that jargon, they probably know how to do that anyways.

CORBA is being used for communication between servers, not for client-server communication.

Yeah other than usingh a MQSeries type service, there wouldnt be anything better than CORBA for that.

I have read here many things that I find quite perplexing.

* Java = MVC? I'm having a hard time picturing how the 'Model View Controler' concept sticks with server-side Java?

* CORBA is not for client-server communication? How so? I can't think of any reason why?

> * CORBA is not for client-server communication? How so? I can't think of any reason why?

I am not using CORBA for client-server communication, although it would certainly be possible to do so.

Originally posted by cyansmoker
* Java = MVC? I'm having a hard time picturing how the 'Model View Controler' concept sticks with server-side Java?
[/B]

Go look at the Jakarta Struts project.

This is all greek to me. I'm just wondering when will you java gurus have your control panel demos online? :)

Originally posted by anantatman


Go look at the Jakarta Struts project.
Haaaa...whoo that's nice. I'm glad they did something like this.
Thanks for pointing that out.