Re: IBM i in the cloud (was social media)

From: Joe Pluta
I'm not sure what you're asking. What would be different?

I was mostly interested in the deployment aspects of EGL/Java based web services
under a cloud services scenario, where a single server may be used to support
multiple tenants. And you answered it, kind of.

Your libraries could be set up by library list, while your authorities would
be by user.

Of course.

I suppose each tenant would have a library list associated
with it, with the authorities identified by the user profile.

Yes, that makes sense.

The only complexity is if you're using stateless servers; you'd need to
switch environments between calls ...

My understanding is that Servlets don't run under library lists. Are you
referring to IBM i host servers, alone? Would you create an intelligent
connection pool manager to determine which tenant each request belongs to?
Users probably wouldn't like the overhead of resetting host server library
lists between calls.

or else have one server for each tenant
and make sure requests are directed properly.

I can see that. Assign each tenant to their own HTTP server port? Run 20
instance of the HTTP server, and 20 instances of WAS. Would that be the best
approach?

Personally, I prefer stateful servers in which I set up the environment when
the session is established. Much simpler, but that's just me. I'm a KISS
kinda guy :).

Just to be clear, is that to say that each user would have their own individual
stateful connection to a native server?

But this is all technical detail stuff. The important point is that you
can secure a multi-tier application, and you can do it effectively.

I agree that one can secure multi-tier applications. Actually, I was trying to
sidestep the security question because I was more interested in what you might
recommend for deployment/runtime efficiency sake.

-Nathan