RE: design question, how to handle this project

My 2 cents:

 -Consider having an "agent" component for each different software version
acting as a mediator between the actual database and the data you want to
collect, opposed to a Java program knowing who runs what. This decouples
your application, which only have to know about the data you want to collect
(clean interface). The agents could also be responsible for registering the
AS400 with the application.

 -The communication between the application and the AS400 systems could be
implemented with messaging, so you can query all systems (almost-paralell)
and then wait for responses to process. Network latency will give you a
"spray" of responses over time, so you can handle them in a
first-come-first-served basis.

 -As long as you know how to reach the AS400 and what could you expect from
them, I don't think webservices are the best option here. I mean, you don't
need UDDI to discover who is running one of your own agents, you already
know that. You still can invoke a "static" webservice but -again- the
overhead may exceed the benefits. If you can define both sides (eg. a XML
formatted request and response), and no other application outside your
domain would ever need to query your AS400s for this same data, you may save
a little.


Of course, take this as just a couple of quick thoughts. Your mileage may
vary...  ;)

Sergio Carabetta




message: 1
date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 08:48:51 -0700 (PDT)
from: Ashish Kulkarni <kulkarni_ash1312@xxxxxxxxx>
subject: design question, how to handle this project

Hi
We have about 30 AS400 system in USA and around the
world running one home developed software, we need to
develop a project which will get data from all AS400
and display them on a website or some report.
Here are some more details.
1. Each AS400 may be running different version of this
software, so the file and tables may be different, so
this project has to handle this.
2. Each AS400 may or may not want to participate in
this project, so have to some how give funtion like to
register
3. The data extraction has to happen in real time, and
not create a pool of data in batch some where and then
display it.

I was thinking of following design options
1. A common database where the system ip address and
the version it is running registered, so a java
program will go to each system and extract data when
required
2. Webservice, each AS400 system running tomcat or
websphere and webservices, then register these
webservices to UDDI server, and then call these to
extract data. 
(some machines may not have sufficient hardware to run
tomcat or websphere)

What may be different approcahes for this kind of
system, and what may be the best approach. and what
you will do if you have to desing this kind of sytem.

Ashish

 

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