& Java Pet Store

Ace was used to redevelop the EJB/J2EE reference application called "Java Pet Store".

After just one week of work with Ace, a virtually complete specification of that application was produced, consisting of its

It is impressive to see the complete semantics of a rather complex e-commerce application captured in basically just these two diagrams. Even a normal human can follow the sequence of web pages and transitions shown on the process diagram to understand how the application is supposed to work.

Comparisons

Microsoft has made a lot of public noise about their .NET implementation of the J2EE reference application Java Pet Store <http://gotdotnet.com/team/compare/>. It is now instructive to compare their results with our SunLabs Project Ace implementation of this same PetStore application.

Lines of Code

One of the things that Microsoft publicizes is a comparison of the number of lines of code which .NET requires verses Java's J2EE/EJB implementation, implying that this correlates to development effort required.

Ace's version of the Java Pet Store application currently consists of just 2 files and a total of 224 lines of developer written code. (ignoring blank lines and comment-only lines just as was done by Microsoft on http://gotdotnet.com/team/compare/petshop.aspx) So the results are:

Creator	Lines of Code	Relative Comparison
JavaSoft J2EE	14,273
Microsoft .NET	3,484	1/4 of JavaSoft (24.4%)
SunLabs Ace	224	1/15 of Microsoft (6.4%)

It is compelling to see Ace duplicate in just 6 days of effort the original 6+ months of hand-coding work required by a programmer to develop the original J2EE application. Microsoft did not disclose the effort required for their .NET implementation, but it was probably several months. This clearly demonstrates an impressive productivity benefit for Ace.

Performance and Scalability

Microsoft also reported impressive performance results <http://gotdotnet.com/team/compare/petshopperf.aspx>. These were considerably aided by the fact that their .NET implementation is actually a 2-tier installation, whereas JavaSoft's EJB was a true 3-tier implementation. However, Ace can take its application specification and generate it as either 2-tier or as 3-tier EJB. So with Ace you can now have the best of either choice.