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Running Dot-Net apps in a J2EE environment.

Remember MainSoft? They were the Win32-on-UNIX company that Microsoft didn't shoot down (unlike Bristol).

Anyhow... Matt Raible reports that MainSoft has a compiler that transforms Dot-Net apps to J2EE apps. According to the marketing materials, MainSoft's product Visual MainWin for J2EE supports Weblogic, Tomcat, and Websphere. Assuming that they support operating systems other than Windows, this is a pretty amazing engineering accomplishment. They must have both a compiler that converts MSIL bytecode into JVM bytecode and what's more, a complete compatibility layer that translates ADO.Net calls into JDBC calls, ASP.Net calls into Servlet API calls, and etc. That's amazing and a hell of a lot of work, but it is not clear to me that anybody will buy it. Win32-on-UNIX was an amazing feat too, but it did not exactly take the software development world by storm.
Dave in Microsoft Comments[9]

Tags: Microsoft

Comments:

Dave, a quick comment on the company that Microsoft did'nt shoot down ;) BTW Mainsoft gave in Microsoft's request to share source code, which is precisely why they are still hanging out. On the other bristol decided to move on with other product lines.

Posted by Arjun Ram on February 18, 2004 at 06:41 PM EST #

It probably decompiles the IL into J# and goes from there. It's pretty easy to transform one .Net language into another by using the IL tools provided. The bigger task of course is the "going from there".

Posted by fx on February 19, 2004 at 12:16 PM EST #

No, it would not make any sense to compile down to J# (which is still stuck at JDK 1.1.4).<p /> Remember, the whole point is to run Dot-Net applications on a J2EE app server. So the compiler must produce standard JDK 1.3 or 1.4 bytecode.

Posted by Dave Johnson on February 19, 2004 at 01:25 PM EST #

And Arjun, as I remember the story: both Bristol and MainSoft were licensing the Microsoft Windows source code. One day, Microsoft decided to jack up the license price. MainSoft accepted the price hike, but Bristol balked and sued Microsoft and won a one dollar settlement. Bristol appealed and then I beleive that Microsoft settled out of court (See Microsoft vs. Bristol).

Posted by Dave Johnson on February 19, 2004 at 01:29 PM EST #

One million dollars, not just one :) but it is not clear to me that anybody will buy it -- to upgrade VB programmers and projects?

Posted by Migs on February 20, 2004 at 11:26 AM EST #

MainWin for J2EE compiles the IL into Java byte code, and along with that provides the Java version of large portions of the .NET Framework required to support ASP.NET, ADO.NET and web services.

Posted by Oved Yavine on February 20, 2004 at 04:19 PM EST #

MainWin for J2EE compiles the IL into Java byte code, and along with that provides the Java version of large portions of the .NET Framework required to support ASP.NET, ADO.NET and web services.

Posted by Oved Yavine on February 20, 2004 at 04:19 PM EST #

Hey Migs, in the first case: "The sole claim on which Bristol prevailed was that Microsoft had violated CUTPA by 'deceptive' acts or practices, and on that claim the jury awarded Bristol one dollar in damages."

Posted by Dave Johnson on February 20, 2004 at 04:50 PM EST #

Oh OK, Guess I was reading something else. A nice symbolic $1. :)

Posted by Migs on February 21, 2004 at 01:22 AM EST #

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