Hi,
I was assigned a class work in the university to compare web
applications architectures, mainly PHP vs
Java+Hibernate+Struts/Stripes. I'll need to provide some benchmarks
for some typical web apps.
Well, I'm a bit afraid that Java may win, because of the usage of
Hibernate, which caches sql stuff in memory. The first request is
usually very slow (10 seconds or more), but following requests are
much faster.
I would not be afraid of that. The question people have to solve is not one of performance but one of scalability and maintainability. Java tends to force people into this frame of mind to rely on one monolithic piece if software to solve all of their problems. This means a simple project ends up being way more complex from day one. Moreover if their single monolithic software fails them, they have a problem. This is the key point that Rasmus keeps saying .. what you want is a layered approach that allows you to solve your real world problems as they appear.
So if Java beats PHP in serving a half way complex page from a single server in # of requests per second I am still not impressed. The question is how long did it take to setup that server. How long will it take until it becomes too expensive to keep adding to this one server? What will you do for failover? etc ..
Although I agree with you, my project is mainly about performance of different web apps architectures.
Anyway, thanks for your point of view. I might use it to convince my professor (who doesn't like PHP..) :)
Thanks,
Nuno