Ok, I understand. I don't know much at all about J2EE, in fact! I would just hate to see an interesting project be abandoned if all that is needed is a simple way to invoke the Haskell code with a string argument, say. Perhaps Shoeb can tell us more about what he needs. -Paul Doug Kirk wrote:

Yes, I agree, and didn't mean to write off Haskell (at which, I'm completely a newbie, trying to learn, and thankful for your book!).

However, I'm a Java pro, and there are many technical issues on the Java side that scream at me to keep out of the native arena, especially in a J2EE container environment, where funny things can happen with hot reloads (dumping old ClassLoaders for new ones), clustering, and the like.

So it wasn't out of denigration of Haskell that I made my recommendation; far from it...from what I've seen Haskell is perfect for implementing DSL's. Rather, from the Java side is where it becomes problematic. There have been many problems integrating with native libraries from within a J2EE container, and I try to seek the most cost-effective way (I'm an independent consultant) to get the problem solved for my customers.

--doug

On Oct 6, 2004, at 2:59 PM, Paul Hudak wrote:

I wouldn't write off Haskell so quickly. All of what Shoeb describes concerning DSL issues might be much more easily solved in Haskell, and will certainly be more flexible than a hard-wired approach. The J2EE interface might be ugly, but if the functionality needed is not too great it might not be too bad. Generally speaking, these kinds of apps -- in this case "a DSL for high-level business rules" -- sounds like just the sort of thing that Haskell is good for.

-Paul