Re: Is Client/Server Dead? Conference May 15th

In article <DpLLyo.46s@cix.compulink.co.uk>, Malcolm Weallans <onlinedbc@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote: >INFUSE will be holding a conference on May 15th entitled "Is >Client/Server Dead?" at the Commonwealth Institute in London. All are I couldn't resist commenting on the whole topic of Client/Server in general. When you think about it, the typical network will be 10Mbps ethernet, that gives you _roughly_ 1 megaBYTE per second throughput. That's about the same I/O throughput as a typical 486DX2-66MHz PC has to it's typical single IDE hard disk. (Actually many such PC's have a little better disk I/O throughput than this amount). Ask yourself this question when planning a client server database + application suite: Would all the database I/O that my apps will be doing under maximum full user load be happily handled if that I/O were being done on a typical 486 PC to it's IDE hard drive? If that answer is yes, then client/server will probably work ok in this instance. If not, then you see why I feel that "client/server" is a "bill of goods" (sarcasm implied) that was sold to the whole informations systems industry, and it never ceases to amaze me how many folks took it in... hook, line and sinker.... without doing a little simple math up front to reveal this fundamental I/O bottleneck. It certainly was a marketing success for a lot of software and hardware vendors, though. :-) Mr. P.T. Barnum would be proud...... my humble opinions only, Neal -- ========================================================================= = Neal Howard neal@metronet.com '91 XLH-1200 DoD #686 '96 Glastron SL175= = "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. If Fuzzy Wuzzy = = had no hair, then Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't Fuzzy, wuz he ?!!!" = = http://www.flash.net/~neal <-------My home page. = =========================================================================