Hmm, I am a java developer, and a really big fan in general of java <fx> burn the witch </fx> I am also a perl developer, so I guess I should know better *grins* Java is a very very elegent application language, that suffers from specific implementational problems.

Now the key phrase here is application language, the structure and the elegence of java comes directly from its close ties to OO. A good design falls into code when you use java. Large applications IMHO are best written in such a way. However the devil is in the implementation, java suffers from some grave implimentation issues. The java VM is bloated and even with recent advances (Hotspot et al) it still does not offer the performance that one would want. This means specifically that the java implimentations are not suited to large applications. It is this split that is the killing java projects atm, it just does not function.

Specifically with regard to java in an application server, I have no experience of Enhydra so cant comment on it directly, but in general terms it is my experience that java application servers provide a level of indirection between the coder and his code that makes debugging, maintenance and deployment more complex than it could be. They also seem to suffer from the general Java malayse (sp?) of bloat.

So in general I cannot say that perl is a good solution as I have no direct experience of using perl in this way, however it is my experience as a practicing java programmer that much as I really like the language I would not select it over perl if I had the decision before me.