Web Decision

[Charles Hoens]

I need some help on the way to go for my newest app with V11.

I have a customer who wants a web app where his 500 or so locations can each bring up the app and use it throughout the day. Each store would have as many as 5 users looking at data more or less all day long. In addition each store wants to allow it's customers access to the application.

Previously, I "solved" this problem by installing a desktop app in each location, where the data would be stored and then, every 15 minutes or so, it would run a program which would transmit the data up to the server where the customers could log in and look at it.

With V11 though, I was hoping to make this all web.

Can anyone give me an idea of the pros and cons of this idea? i.e. Would this kind of use overwhelm either Alpha or the server itself? Anything else I may be missing?

Many thanks,

Charlie

[Steve Workings]

Re: Web Decision

For starters, there's no way I'd want to do any of this with desktop apps and all their problems x 500. No way. That's what the web is for and a web app is a gimme I would think.

You'll have to do some work to predict server load and traffic, etc. -- that would be a top consideration in design. There's lots of help out there for that if you want it, and I'd consider having a conversation with a an expert or two so you know what this would entail.

Sounds like a big project - congrats on the prospects.

[Charles Hoens]

Re: Web Decision

Well, I agree. Life would be made infinitely more simple for me too as all I would have to do is handle the code once in one place. BTW, as I am still playing with V11, your videos are simply the best! Just another way Alpha helps lead the way in programming. With V9 and V10, I just played around until I got what I wanted. These videos are terrific.

Thanks for your help!

Charlie

[reedallenbrown]

Re: Web Decision

Charles,

I have a program that does just that and it works great. Mine is for the Hospice industry but it runs like what you want yours to. Alpha can Handel it for you just fine. I would use SQL as your back end however.

[bobalston]

Re: Web Decision

@Charles
I presume there is something about your existing solution that needs to be different. Perhaps you should focus on what you need to be different and what problems you now experience.

bob

[Pat Bremkamp]

Re: Web Decision

Charles,

I helped Chad Brown with his conversion from individual servers in each store to a totally web application. In his case, he has 15 stores with about 90 users 7 days per week, 16 hours per day. His application is working very well being all on the web. He could probably give you more advice than me about what the environment is like, but the situation is the same except for scale.

V11 seems to handle the load much better that V10, especially using the tabbedUI (the Xbasic version of Chad's tabbedUI is over 30,000 lines long, and it is still very fast!). With V10, he used multiple instances of the WAS to handle the load all, linked to a common MySQL back end. Now with V11, one instance is enough. If the load becomes an issue, you could just fire up additional WAS instances to meet what ever issues you have. You could even do some fancy load balancing, but it if those 500 locations have similar useage, and one instance will only handle 100 locations, then get 5 ip addresses, put one instance on each and have each 100 locations log into a different instance. That also gives you some redundancy since if one instance goes down for any reason, those locations can just log in to one of the other instances and keep going.

The web is definately the way to go for a distributed application like you described. The biggest benefit is speed of changes and upgrades. If Chad has an idea about a feature he wants to add or Bell Canada makes a change, we can usually have all the stores functioning with the new version in an hour or two.

Good luck with your app!