AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA

Organizations want to integrate the internet seamlessly into their information systems. Java is the most appropriate programming language for this purpose.
Jane Chukwurah (A00011470)
2/15/2012

Abstract
Since the mid- 1990s, the internet has experienced tremendous growth. This phenomenon has fundamentally equipped and changed the thinking of organisations in the nation. Many organizations strive to evolve in todays dynamic environment. This involves adapting to the current trends which in this case is the use of information systems in order to reap the benefits of the information era. These benefits include; Improve revenue, broaden customer base, achieve strategic sustainability in a rapidly changing competitive environment and many more. Integrating the internet into information systems can be achieved through various processes but finding the most appropriate means is where the issue lies. This paper proves the fact that java is the most appropriate programming language for this integration. Keywords: Information Systems, Internet, Java.

Introduction
In recent times, business organizations have become more dependent on their information systems to manage complexities and irregularities in their internal organization structures. Since efficiency is the main goal of any organisation, it is only natural that humans cannot oversee the entire operation and still achieve this goal. Gradual improvements such as dynamic networks, mass customization of products and services, reduction in unnecessary costs and many more have shown a great need for information systems, therefore, business requirements to information systems increase at an amazing pace. In the 1950s, a small number of companies used computers. Today, Information technology is a major factor and plays a huge role for business success today. The Internet on the other hand, is the fastest rising part of the information era. The use of the Internet began over 25 years ago as a United States Defence Department project. It is now a global network which provides an avenue for millions of computers to communication through various communication lines (Hames,1998). Currently over 100 million people in 150 countries around the world are using the Internet and it was the invention of the World Wide Web by an individual known as Tim Berners-Lee and the subsequent lifting of the ban on commercialization that brought about this trend. No other single entity has ever been so widely accepted at such a non-stop pace in history (Hames,1998).

Information Systems in the Internet Age

Since the prevalent availability of computing technologies, Organizations have come to rely on information systems for daily planning, and general decision making. Just making use of this system is not enough but its effective use of information has become a major success factor in the society today. In various parts of the society, the Internet has already modified the way individual work, communicate, or perform various activities. Internet computing is completely revamping the nature and scope of information systems (Yu,2004).

Information systems, with the integration of the internet (Internet Computing), find themselves expanding in scope with regard to content types, system capabilities, and organizational boundaries. Information systems and the internet are both compatible and beneficial to organizational development in the following ways:

Information systems depend on structured data. The Internet, which derived some popularity by offering information for the general public, released the need for unstructured information. Organizations quickly realized that their information systems capabilities must fully address the range of information content, to serve their internal workings. They can do this relatively easily, by embracing the same Internet technology.

Users working with information do not want to have to deal with many separate systems. Internet computing, by offering various platforms for application building, makes it possible for assorted technical capabilities to appear to the user. Thus, Internet computing vastly expands what a user may expect of a system (Yu,2004).

Various information systems in the past had a domestic focus and mostly operated within the boundaries of an organization. Internet computing is revamping this trend both from a technological viewpoint, and from an information services viewpoint.

Is Java the most appropriate programming language for this?

It is known that choosing a programming language depends on the programmers language experience and the scope of the application being built (MSDN,2012). Again, it is important to consider whether the applications built or integration process used is for a small organization or a large one. While small applications which run small organizations are often created using only one language, it is not uncommon to develop large applications using multiple languages. Web programmers are known to have different opinions on what they think is the most appropriate programming language for certain tasks. Certain criteria such as speed, flexibility, ease of use, and many more are used to judge a programming language to determine its usefulness in a particular task. Java on the other hand, is a general-purpose, object-oriented language gives programmers or application developers the ability to "write once, run anywhere". This means that codes written by developers run on one platform and does not need to be recompiled to run on another (MS,2007). Java is currently one of the most popular programming languages being used in the world today, particularly for client-server web applications.

Java is not a perfect programming language. It is known to be significantly slower than the natively compiled languages such as C or C++. Java is also predominantly a singleparadigm language which poses as a major disadvantage. With its imperfections, it is still known to have the following advantages over other programming languages; y Java is simple: Java was designed to be easy to use. It uses automatic memory allocation and garbage collection. Some other programming languages require the programmer to allocate memory and to collect garbage. Due to its simplicity, it would be easy to integrate the internet into information systems y Java is secure: Java is known to be one of the first programming languages to consider security as part of its design. This is proven by the language, compiler, interpreter, and runtime environment which was developed with security as a priority. y Java is platform-independent: One of the most favourable advantages of Java is its ability to move easily from one computer system to another. This ability is crucial to World Wide Web software, and Java prevails at this by being platform-independent at both the source and binary levels. y Java is distributed: Distributed computing involves various computers working together on a particular network. Java is designed to make distributed computing easy with the networking capability which is integrated into it. y Java is robust: Java is the only programming language that shows some sort of reliability as compilers are able to detect problems that would first show up during execution time. y Java is multithreaded: Multithreaded is a term that explains the capability for a program to perform several tasks simultaneously within a program. Multithreading is a necessity in visual and network programming and it has been smoothly been integrated into java. With the advantages listed above, it is therefore obvious that java is the appropriate programming language for the seamless integration of the internet in organisational information systems.

Conclusion

Internet computing is gradually altering the world of information systems. Organizations originally started using information systems as computer applications designed for a specific to automate a previous manual process. The internet provides a wider range for these organizations. A system project involves significant investments and time because it typically requires its own technology infrastructure, including networking. Java provides an easy avenue for this integration.

Works Cited
Hames, Roderick. INTEGRATING THE INTERNET INTO THE BUSINESS. 1998. MS. "Java Advantages and Disadvantages." 2007 April 22. Webdotdev. 10 Febuary 2012 <http://www.webdotdev.com/nvd/content/view/1042/204/>. MSDN. 9 Febuary 2012 <http://msdn.microsoft.com/enus/library/aa292164%28v=vs.71%29.aspx>. Yu, Eric. "Information Systems (in the Internet Age)." Practical Handbook of Internet Computing (2004).