I am not sure I like the suggestions of using Terminal Server or Citrix -
isn't it just the conceptual equivalent of giving your clients PC-Anywhere &
tell them to dial into your server?
The biggest problem is suggesting running a dial-up line - Telecom charge 4
cents a minute during the day so if you are talking about a dial up line to
an ISP then you are looking at 8 x 60 x 4 / 100 : ~$20 dollars a day (per
site) or ~30 cents per transaction. It would be cheaper to put in leased
line (only $90 month for a 33.6 last time I looked - admittedly years ago),
and would give you 24/7 uptime. Of course, you still have to connect to an
ISP & pay charges.... good luck finding an ISP that will guarantee uptime
- voyager lost our link for a couple of hours last week :-(.
Its just a personal opinion, but I think that PC's are cheap enough that
running dumb terminals just seems wrong.
If you want to keep _running_ costs down, then I would be asking the
questions about how fresh the data needs to be for reports & the uptimes
required. If you have something like a on-line booking system then
real-time transactions are going to be important. For a more typical POS
type system with nightly (off-peak) reconcilations, then something like the
Astra or Midware looks interesting but you are going to have to think about
the data flows very carefully.
If you already have the app running on the LAN & the company seems value in
installing a WAN (hopefully not just for your app), then its not a problem -
just get a network consultant in to set up a WAN link (frame-relay, leased
line, ISDN - get them to do quotes). All you have to do is to make sure your
app is not too bandwidth intensive - ie check you are not using TTables on
large datasets or doing select * on big tables & joins. Unless you have a
badly designed database or large datasets you shouldn't choke a ADSL link at
the server end.
> > The Remote sites are not in cities and may not have access to ADSL
> > Do these alter your suggested solution?
>
> With Citrix, you can use dial up and configure it to
> reconnect (without losing your session) when the line drops out. Quite
> good really.
> > Seems funny to me that Terminal Server (with the application
> > residing on the
> > server) is a better solution than having the application on
> > each site with only
> > the database on the server. Comments?
>
> With YOUR particular situation, its OK. It also keeps your
> costs down, as
> you only need to install your application *once* at the
> server. You can
> also configure WinFrame so that you can dial in to do remote
> support. The
> client machines don't need super CPUs, even a lowly 286 will do!
>
>
> Regards,
> Dennis.
>
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> Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
>
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