Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: REST web service APIs

Kelly,

It was just a coincidence that Walmart appeared in an IBM link that was
germane to the topics we've been discussing on this list. Nevertheless, I
felt that I might be egging you on if I were to assert that there was more
to the Walmart story than Node.js. I hope you don't mind ;-)

That could backfire on me if we were to learn that Walmart was spinning up
Node.js instances in order to deploy web-service APIs. I seem to recall
Walmart using Node.js to generate formatted responses to mobile clients and
using Java to provide back-end web-service APIs. But I haven't confirmed
that.

I personally don't view Java web services as a "back-end" interface. I'd
rather view Java web services as a middleware layer.

Given an IBM i database, I would view ILE programs and SQL stored
procedures as the back-end.

I don't mean this discussion to pick on Node.js. I think there is a place
for it. I mostly felt that if you were to use Node.js for generating
formatted responses to browsers, then you should consider web-service APIs
as a way to interact with IBM i.

Nathan.




On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 10:24 AM, Kelly Cookson <KCookson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Yes, Node.JS is not everything Walmart is doing. They have a lot more they
are doing in terms of building a cloud of services.

My comments earlier-which are indeed shallow-is that Walmart was able to
handle high volumes of requests (around half of their online Black Friday
traffic) with their CPU hovering around 1%. Other companies have also been
able to use Node to process more requests more quickly and reduce the
servers they use because they don't need as much CPU. The point I was
attempting to make is that, in real-life situations, Node is fast, scales
in terms of handling high volumes of requests, and keeps CPU relatively low.

I did not mean to imply that Node was anything more than a piece in a
puzzle. I often refer to Node as a niche technology. It's very opinionated
about how it does things, and it's definitely not the right tool for all
projects. But when Node is used appropriately, it can be very successful.
(So can other tools. Just saying Node is one tool in the toolbox.)

Thanks,

Kelly Cookson
IT Project Leader
Dot Foods, Inc.
217-773-4486 ext. 12676
www.dotfoods.com<http://www.dotfoods.com>