Re: Java and NC
Tim Schaefer wrote: > > [some snippage occured to prevent confusion of who said what] > > > Actually, NC's are better for intranet apps than PCs. > > > It's too early to tell for sure. If you read some of the articles > at javaworld.com the cost for some of the NCs are actually higher > than a PC--at the outset. But I'd love to have one server and > several NCs here at my lab at home. The simplicity is so > obvious. But if it works for an intra-net, it obviously will > work for inter-net apps, as long as you have bandwidth. It also > begs the question of setting up replication schemes for internet > apps--will it even be necessary for internet apps as they exist > today, compared with NC-based apps. > ... I had the impression that the NC-java solution had the possibility of saving bandwidth in comparison to the fat client solutions today. Consider the following three scenarios: 1. PC fat client. All the code stored on a file server and loaded to the PC over the net. The PC runs a bunch of SQL commands over ODBC. If a report is run then possibly huge amounts of data are sent to the PC from the database server where it is formatted and sent over the net to a laser printer. 2. Java machine with fat client. This is similar to 1 except that the not-so-small java applets are sent over the net requiring even more bandwidth. JDBC is used instead of ODBC and the administration advantages of the NC apply. 3. Java very thin client. The grunt of the application runs on a server (same or close to the database server). The applets that the NC runs are only the user interface portions. In other words, application partitioning (3-tier c/s) along with minimum administration and machine independence. Now, scenario 2 with JDBC is the easy way to go and I'm sure it has it's place, but isn't scenario 3 the *real* thing for database applications, in terms of bandwidth, cost and security? Do I see this the wrong way? I'd love to hear comments about these issues, like what tools do this kind of thing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- John H. Frantz Power-4gl: Extending Informix-4gl frantz@centrum.is http://www.rl.is/~john/pow4gl.html