Java’s dirty little secret: Java web hosting is fragile.
April 5, 2006
When people think of Java, they think of some mighty indestructible language/environment that never goes down – well at least less than other platforms like PHP or .NET.
REALITY CHECK
After running my own servers for 6 years (IIS with Resin) with few troubles, I moved hosting to outside sources. I had to go through several hosting companies before I found one that could even run my simple POJO based applications!
Now after a year has passed, my experience with shared Java hosting can be summarized:
- Tomcat seems to go down at least once every 7-14 days.
- Contrast this to PHP – never goes down.
FINAL COMMENTS
The Java community tends to dismiss PHP as some scrappy scripting language that can’t be counted on … I must confess, I used to think that too.
Now after a year of using both Java based and PHP based applications, I have personally found PHP to be much more stable and reliable. I am actually nervous that my Java applications (and Tomcat) will fail regularly and am moving to migrate everything to PHP.
I have no axe to grind, just speaking the truth based on my experience.
Stefan Mischook (The Web Design Heretic)
