Re: replicating an I-series home-grown application to a .net platform

Let me ask you this, what kind of access are your customers expecting?
24x7x365? With maybe only the occasional outage like my bank shows (this
site will be down on ...day mm/dd/yy from hh:mm to hh:mm for maintenance)?
Can your i currently support this without affecting:
- backup programs
- Month end or year end processing
- OS upgrades, ptf's, etc
That's one consideration.

Another one, is performance. Are you already maxed out? Maybe this is a
possibility. Although it sounds like a tightly controlled duplication and
not a full blown executive dashboard type application with intensive
querying. I wouldn't think it would be that processor intensive. Then
again, your .net people may not be familiar with stored procedure calls
(if they apply for the application) versus querying the data directly.

What kind of data delay is acceptable? I absolutely detest that my bank
(a biggie, by the way) takes days to apply a credit card payment while an
automatic check to some outside entity is instantaneous. Probably just
sucking on late fees and interest charges. If your customer places an
order and checks the status on your new web site will they be in sync?

Last consideration: Are your .net people prone to stupidity? Will they
do things like:
- connect by IP address thus thwarting your HA switching solutions,
network upgrades, etc?
- not know how to connect to an external database since it's the boss'
nephew doing .net after finishing his HS homework?
- Write stuff prone to SQL injection?
- rewrite quote as $ x 1.5 to connect to an external database?

Does your security policy allow you to configure a user profile they can
use to connect with which will also dispense with concerns like password
expiration interval, etc?




Rob Berendt