The battle for Web services supremacy between the Java and Microsoft .Net camps is far from over, according to a survey released this week.
Evans Data Corp.’s North American Developer survey, the results of which were announced this week, found that the battle for Web services technical standards is undecided at this point. The more than 600 developers surveyed virtually split on development plans for Java and .Net. The survey, completed in September, found that 40 per cent are developing applications for .Net now but 63 per cent will target .Net in a year, while 51 per cent develop for Java today and 61 per cent plan to do so next year.
Web services adoption, meanwhile, will jump from 57 per cent now to 87 per cent in 2003, according to the survey findings.
Some 43 per cent of developers are either currently deploying Web services applications or expect to in the next six months. Internal Web services applications are the focus for developers in the initial phase.
Obstacles to Web services deployments include end-to-end security, noted in 24 per cent of responses; ambiguity in standards, cited by 21 per cent of participants; and the technical issue of architecting and integrating services-oriented application architectures, named by 16 per cent of respondents.
Other trends cited in the survey include wireless development, with 48 per cent planning applications in the next year, and Linux development, with 8 per cent citing Linux as their primary OS and 15 per cent as a secondary OS. There also is a marked migration from Visual Basic 6.0 and earlier to Visual Basic .Net.
