Actually it is not even quite right, to view Perl and Java as competitors. Although in some areas, the two languages bump into each other from time to time, for most of the areas, it is quite clear why you should choose Perl not Java, or the other way around.

Perl is very useful for what it is good at, but I don't see any sign that Perl can support enterprise level requirements easily and comnfortably. Perl is mainly still a rapid development language for various tool-level needs.

As for J2EE, although it is quite complex, majority part of the complexity is actually hidden from application developers. J2EE provides the foundation, and application prorgammers just keep adding blocks on top of it. The fact that it can be used by lots and lots of people, clearly speaks for J2EE - the complexity exposed to end users is really not too bad.

(I have had some experience with J2EE, in fact my main work at this moment is a J2EE-based application, implementation phase. My feeling is that, to first set up the development environment and deployment/running environment is really complex, but once it is set up, writing code is not really a big deal, as long as you have a fair experience with Java.)

One nature of Perl is that, it is a very strong LANGUAGE, but it appears that people rarely get into research or implementation of ARCHITECTURES based on Perl or for Perl.

Everything has what it is good at, force it into areas that does not belong to it, does not do any good. Not be able to support enterprise solutions, does not make Perl less useful. On the contrary, the fact you and me are using Perl from day to day, speaks for Perl loudly.