RE: Fast400 Value to iSeries community is less than zero -- MIDRANGE-L

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Damato
>
> >This is your client/server infrastructure, which you design once.  You
> >have a request broker that handles these details.  It determines
> whether >a
> given service is running, and if not, initiates it.  It can
> create >multiple
> instances, adjust priorities, and all kinds of nice things.
> >It's work, but
> not that much, especially for a relatively simple >environment.  And most
> importantly, you only write this code once!
>
>
> You say "it's work, but not that much."  I think you might be too smart
> and/or have too much experience to know how hard it is.

It's purely experience.  Like pretty much anything, it's much easier to copy
an existing design than to do it from scratch, and I learned from some very
good people in the late 70s and early 80s.  I've basically been refining
that same design for a couple of decades now.

Think of it this way: given a DDS manual and an empty source library, how
long would it take you to write a subfile program from scratch?  On the
other hand, it's pretty easy to clone an existing program and then modify it
to do what you want.  A client/server architecture is of roughly the same
difficulty - the questions are a little different, but the number of them is
about the same.  And once you see it done, it's pretty easy to modify and
extend.


> I've watched quite a few failed or half-assed client server, and now web
> development projects.  Folks assume that they can set up a bunch of forms
> that cough up SQL statments and that the network, system, and
> database will handle everything.

This is what I've been fighting against the last four or five years.  The
creep of ODBC "development" that is little more than a bunch of ad hoc
database queries and updates.  A real client/server infrastructure takes
some upfront expense, but once that's done, your application development is
fast, flexible and powerful.


> A 5250 based environment was more forgiving of sloppy design.
> Behind us we
> have years of successful development based on primitive or just plain bad
> software architecture.  I think you're right that a standard, modular
> infrastructure can simplify code and insulate you from client and server
> dependencies.  Most of us, however, are waiting for someone to
> write it for
> us.

Interestingly enough, my agent and I have been discussing just such a book.
In it, I was intending to develop an entire client/server application from
scratch, jsut like I did in my eDeployment book for the server/client
(revitalization) architecture.  I'd detail each piece of the middleware, and
then show how it's used to write a real, if not overly complicated,
application.  Do you think that would be a useful book?

Joe Pluta
www.plutabrothers.com