Rick Hazey wrote:
I'm curious what versions of 4D people are using in a production environment.
In my case, any Active4D site I build will be exposed to the internet, so I'm
inclined to use 4D Server so I can run it as service/daemon.
Is there any other advantage to using 4D Server over straight 4D? Or vice versa? Any advantage to using Windows over Mac? Or vice versa?
Rick,
If you are only using 4th Dimension to serve Active4D and have no
desktop 4D Clients attached I don't think there is a technical advantage
of using 4D Server except the capability to natively run as a service.
Also there are 3rd Party tools for Windows that will allow you to run 4D
standalone or 4D Client as a service.
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg02036.html
Something similar may exist for the Mac.
Even though you can run 4D Server as a service, I've found I prefer to
run it as an app. If you are running it as a service, you can't see what
it going on if there is a problem. If you need to see what's going on,
you have to shutdown the service and restart 4D Server as an app. If
there was a console to the service I'd have a different opinion. (I'm
hoping my experience is ancient wisdom, and that someone will point out
this is wrong)
We currently run 4D Server 6.8.4 on Windows , but have a number of
desktop PC desktop clients. We run Active4D on 4D Client on Mac using
the ITK web server. We also have a static web site, so all web traffic
is proxied through WebSTAR. We've been using 4D Client with some form of
4D "web enabler" since 96. I'm happy with performance running on 4D
Client and love Active4D.
We will be upgrading our systems from 6.8.4 to 2003.7 in a few weeks.
There are various pro/con arguments for running server on Windows or
Mac. Windows may provide more performance for the dollar. The Mac is
more secure and easier to administer.
In my experience, by turning off unneccessary Windows services,
dedicating the server to 4D, limiting physical access, limiting network
access to only those machines that need it, and being diligent about
security and virus updates (which hasn't been as much work as some
people make it out to be), I've had a 4D Server machine that has never
be infected, compromised or crashed.
With my Mac OS X 'web' 4D Client machines, I do occasionally have to
take them off-line to repair file permissions to clear up 4D Client
crashing problems.
Having said all that, I'd say use whatever platform you are most
comfortable with.
What about maintenance? Any advantages to updating using 4D client over
straight 4D? I'm thinking of changes to the structure or methods in this case.
The general wisdom is to always run production servers compiled,
therefore live structure updates aren't an issue. If I had to run
interpreted my preference would be to code via 4D Client against a
Server, but that is mainly because I've always done it that way.
The beauty of Active 4D is that you rarely need to write 4D code.
Aparajita has made some very nice improvements in v4 that make it
possible to now write A4D Code that in the past would have needed to be
written in 4D.
hth,
Brad Perkins
_______________________________________________
Active4D-dev mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman.aparajitaworld.com/mailman/listinfo/active4d-dev
Archives: http://mailman.aparajitaworld.com/archive/active4d-dev/
