Web Development: A Comparison of Three Major Platforms

Area

LAMP

ASP.NET

J2EE

Licensing cost

·         No licensing cost

·         Expensive licensing cost

·         No licensing cost

Support options and cost

·         Free support via community

·         Paid support options available

·         Free support via community

·         Paid support options available

·         Free support via community

·         Paid support options available

Platform(s)

·         Multiple

·         Windows only

·         Multiple

Hardware

Costs

·         Runs on very inexpensive servers

·         Requires slightly more expensive servers

·         Requires expensive servers

Staffing

·         Somewhat difficult to find qualified people

·         Very easy to find qualified people

·         Reasonably easy to find qualified people

External Hosting

·         Widely available and inexpensive

·         Widely available, but more expensive

·         Not widely available

Security

·         Very good

·         Historically very bad, but improved recently

·         Good

Performance

·         Very good

·         Often requires more expensive hardware to perform well

·         Often requires substantial configuration and expensive hardware

Scalability

·         Scales very well

·         Can be difficult to scale

·         Scales well when configured properly

Administration

·         Difficult: Often requires reading documentation and editing text files

·         Easy: Often can be done through point and click interface

·         Moderate: Sometimes can be done visually

Configuration

ease of use

·         Can be difficult to configure properly

·         Easy to configure

·         Moderately difficult to configure

Configuration flexibility

·         Extremely flexible

·         Not very flexible

·         Moderately flexible

Framework(s)

·         Many available – often difficult to choose

·         One standardized framework

·         One standardized framework

Components

·         Widely available

·         Widely available

·         Widely available

Compatibility

·         Very good: New versions usually backwards-compatible

·         Moderate: New versions often break functionality

·         Bad: Many problems between old and new versions