My current day job task is driving me batty. I need to recommend Tomcat or Jetty as a servlet engine (i.e. embedded), when the context project has already chosen Jetty.
The project side is naturally resistant. From their viewpoint, we’re coming as some red tape late in the game: wholly unnecessary. And I somewhat agree: Tomcat and Jetty are probably about equivalent for the project’s purposes, and the role they play isn’t so large as to pose a major risk anyway.
Unfortunately, since Tomcat is a known and approved technology, and Jetty is not, there’s a bit of an issue. Not so much for the project itself, but that approval for this project may be construed by others as a larger approval for Jetty in general. The company’s trying to reduce the number of technologies in use after all.
So I spend my commute time and my weekend pondering how to make my case for Jetty, and finding my arguments rather weak. Not to mention the dubious approach of having a desired conclusion first before writing a report. I think the fact that I can’t make a good case is a strong indicator that something’s missing, but, ick, how troublesome erasing hard-earned goodwill with initially hostile coworkers over something that’s so minor to the company. The cost of all this debate alone is probably greater than handling the risk of Jetty not working out!
