Are there hidden costs to using Java?

[Mat Cauthon]

I am just asking because recently I was shopping around for a jsp/servlets web host and found they are quite a bit more then traditional cgi hosts with comparable features/disk space/transfer.

Why is this?

<off topic rant>
I settled on 4java.ca because they have terrific features and thought the support would be good based on the emails asking preliminary questions. Boy was I wrong. They promised 24 hour set up and had to start nagging them at 48 hours, and had to wait another 15 for them to set it up. Then the support documents were poor and had to blindly set things up. Not only that Tomcat isn't even installed, but at least the JVM, cgi-bin and python are, which are actually more important to me. Still pretty sad the features aren't all installed. I could go on and on but my blood pressure is rising. Avoid these clowns.
</off topic rant>

[Lewin Chan]

In a hosted environment yes there are costs to using java. By hosted, I mean where you aren't in full control of the machine, so you can do your own tuning. Here's just a couple of examples.

Obviously the hoster will want a single servlet container to handle many apps as there will be a cpu issue with each new JVM that you start

A badly written java webapp is much more likely to bring down the servlet container, than a similarly badly written php app (lets say).

[ October 07, 2006: Message edited by: Lewin Chan ]

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

If you know of any popular Java web hosting sites, I'd really be interested in looking at them.

I love Java, but I've never found a discount host that allowed the deployment of war files. As a result, I've had to learn how to code in PHP, which seems like the standard scripting language of the web, nowadays.

I think the rule is, if you want discount hosting, you learn PHP and mySQL. If you want to learn Java while deploying war files, you do it on you desktop.

Again, if you do know of any good Java hosting web sites, let me know what they are.

Cheers!

-Cameron McKenzie

[Bear Bibeault]

ut I've never found a discount host that allowed the deployment of war files.

There are tons of Java hosting sites on the web. If you want complete control -- in other words a private JVM -- you'll obviously pay a little more than one which jumbles everyone's hosting into a single server instance.

But there are plenty of them out there. The Servet FAQ lists the tip of the iceberg.