> Why did you need to use Client as the web server?
I'll just chime in here and explain our reason for this in 21 easy words:
Scalability, Security, Scalability, Stability, Stability, Security, a bit of
Scalability and a nice helping of Stability and another dose of Security ;-)
Scalabiliy and Stability go together:
- in order to offer maximum performance of a high load website with a
guaranteed service level of 98% at a planned max of 500k Pageviews (not
hits) a day, you cannot rely on one HTTP server (can you spell SINGLE POINT
OF FAILIURE?), but you need several. Also some tasks are more time consuming
than others, and especially with the way 4D shells out processor time to the
different processes, some operations can bring 4D to a crawl. Now if you
distribute to several clients and use them as HTTP servers you can share
that load, also you can automatically react to dead clients, as all traffic
can immediately be rerouted to thos still alive and gives you plenty of time
to recover the dead client/clients.
Also as the server is your most important piece in the puzzle and a SPOF
(single point of failiure) you want to keep it as safe as humanely possible.
We achive this by not using any stored procedures that actually do
something, the only stored procedure we have is sused for sending data to
and from the server and to synchronise some stuff between clients.
This makes for a server that does only what it should do: serve data and
nothing else!
Security:
- If you run a web system with public access (in our case a shopping
platform) you will be prone to hacking attempts from bored script kiddies,
trying to either deface or kill your server. Although 4D is pretty imune to
these things, I still know of ways to easily kill a 4D Server (have yet to
test it with 2K3), you would not want to run any risks whatsoever.
Separating the data server from the web servers gives you an additional
level of security, as you could for example run the 4D client protokol off a
different NIC than the web server and completely hide your server behind a
firewall.
As an added level of security you can hide the web servers behind another
webserver with a well known security record (i.e. Apache) and thus not have
to worry at all about 4D's safety issues.
We also use 4D's web server on 4D Server or standalone for other projects,
with less visibility and much less traffic (mostly B2B solutions) and we are
happy with it, and so might you, but if you run a high traffic, high public
visibility website, you definitely need to take into account the above
issues.
HIH
Cheers
Alex
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Heintz GmbH Kommunikation [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.heintz.de
the 4th Dimension people Tel.: +49-2402-763055
The professional choice for custom made database applications
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