Comparison of Enterprise Java Beans and .NET from a Component Point of View

Abstract: This paper may be of interest for anyone developing component based software, (such as software architects and designers, advanced web system developers etc), companies choosing between technologies and that are in need of high performance, etc. The Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) technology and the .NET technology are similar to each other in many ways. Both of the technologies are used for developing components that can interact through some kind of server, it is possible to make distributed applications etc. The similarities between these technologies make it interesting to compare them. They also make it hard to decide which technology to choose. One goal of this report is to present information that can help choosing. This is done by presenting basic component theory, information about EJB and .NET, and finally the result of an experiment is presented. In the experiment one or more clients connect to one or more servers to get to a set of distributed components. As it turns out, EJB is superior to .NET in all areas but one. EJB needs more resources and may cut clients of when not getting enough. .NET on the other hand is slow, but it always delivers.