Re: Thinking out loud about a new RPG web framework

Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen wrote:

Naturally. I was expecting that we were looking at writing new stuff here, instead of gluing a webfront end on code not written to be web callable.

You're getting nasty. Browser-based applications can be stateful or stateless. To denigrate stateful applications as being "glued on" is a slashdot attitude, not a productive comment.

As written above, i do not. I just say that for the java+RPG combination I believe that best performance requires that you put the session state on ONE side of the gap that the QZRSVRS connection imposes. For java using session beans, this means having all the session state in Java.

To me :)

Here's a simple example. The user requests an ad hoc query over a database with millions of records. (This is truly an ad hoc query - no index or view exists to satisfy the request.) They want the first 20 records of the set, and then page through 20 at a time.

How do you write this application?

Me, I have a stateful connection to an RPG program that creates an SQL cursor and then reads the first 20 records. The cursor stays open, and the next request gets the next 20 records. Response time is as long as it takes to build the index for the first request, then instantaneous for subsequent requests.

In your scenario, you must either send the entire contents of the result set over the wire for the first request, or you must build a new cursor for each request.

This is the type of thing that happens all the time, and it's the reason why business applications need stateful connections. The idea that all things must be stateless is just another myth that needs to go away.

Joe