Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: ibm_db node module and IBM Data Server Driver

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 6:17 PM, Kelly Cookson <KCookson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Walmart.com has been migrated to node.

That is the type of assertion that vexes me. If you monitor the network
traffic returned to your browser by visiting walmart.com you can see that
the VAST majority of Walmart's content doesn't come from walmart.com. It's
provided by Akamai and Google and a host of other third parties that are
running Apache and IIS, which is reported by netcraft.com. A few dynamic
responses are served by "Unknown" HTTP hosts, which could be a signature
for Node. My point is that the Node footprint at walmart.com is TINY in
comparison to content served by Apache and IIS.

“Over the course of the last year, Walmart.com — a site that handles 80
million monthly visitors and offers 15 million items for sale — migrated to
React and Node.js. In the process of this transition, the WalmartLabs team
built Electrode, a React-based application platform to power Walmart.com.
It’s now open sourcing this platform.”

You appear to be quoting Alex Grigoryan who appears to be Walmart's top
evangelist for Node.js. His writings, conference presentations, and
responses to questions leave a lot of relevant information out concerning
Walmart's operations, which I find misleading. Maybe he's the reason that
you believe that Walmart "quit" Java, which is absolutely false.
Walmart.com and it's Node interfaces are completely dependent on a
middle-tier layer of Java web services, which in turn rely on back-end
database services.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/03/walmartlabs-open-
sources-the-application-platform-that-powers-walmart-com/

At 4 minutes 25 seconds into the linked talk (https://vimeo.com/180426333),
Alex Grigoryan explains why Walmart migrated to node:

"So we were currently on Handlebars, Java and Backbone. And we really
wanted a lot more scale. We wanted to leverage a lot more requests per
second, be more performant, we wanted our developers to be a lot more
productive, and we're going through those numbers later on in the
presentation. And most of all we wanted reusability. We wanted the ability
to leverage components across different brands."

Again, if Alex Grigoryan left you with the impression that walmart.com
"quit" Java, then you've been misled.

I understand that Walmart replaced a handful of Java web interfaces with
Node counterparts and deployed them at 3rd party PAAS data centers
distributed throughout the world. Walmart.com scales by renting hundreds or
thousands of servers throughout the world.

Given the absence of benchmarks of applications such as "add to cart" and
"checkout", there is no way of knowing whether Node or Java perform or
scale better. Walmart could have achieved 60% (citing Alex Grigoryan) more
throughput with Node, simply by deploying it across more servers than the
Java counterparts. Who knows?

You can also find articles about node success stories at large companies
here:

· https://nodesource.com/blog/how-massive-companies-use-
node-js-at-scale/

· https://www.netguru.co/blog/top-companies-used-nodejs-production

· https://www.brainvire.com/the-success-story-of-5-retailers-
that-have-embraced-node-js/

I get that. Node is gaining in popularity. But hopefully, you're not
allowing "popularity" trump analysis of how well Node fits your specific
requirements and qualifications.

I plan to take my future discussions of node to the Midrange.com OpenSource

list. I several people on this list also on that list. I’m not looking for
a new crowd. The OpenSource list just seems to have a higher percentage of
discussions about node on the IBM i. There are probably a lot of people on
this list using PHP, CGI and other technologies that are sick to death of
all the node posts here. Sorry about that.

I'm personally interested in Node. And I hope that I'm not the reason that
you're moving your questions to the other list. I'm just vexed by some of
the misleading assertions that appear in these discussions, and hope that
people are not misled by them.