Hi people,
just colated Tony's opinions, which really are rather good. Here for your
viewing pleasure. This is "raw and unedited"....
--------------------------------------------------------------
I still like MIDAS. There is quite a lot larger learning curve than I first
thought...Borland have this knack of saying Point, Click and there you go a
fully featured multitiered distributed processing Ra Ra app all done for
you...
[nic: very true, we do have a habit of doing that, which in _my_ opinion is
not always a good thing. Its not always possible to cram a "full" demo into
a 1 hour launch or seminar tho]
Reality is, if it wasn't for Dan Miser, I probably wouldn't have had the
success we have had. Thanks DAN. Haven't got time to comment on the list...
and I always get into arguments!
[nic: http://www.distribucon.com for Dan's stuff]
Really you have to understand MIDAS, and DCOM, what I mean is, you cant just
use it. The multithreading/synchronization thing needs careful design.
We have all our SQL externalized. Fully user configurable and designable
externalized business rules, and our app is stateless. We have HTML, GUI,
and RF clients. Cant see the point of HTML clients. Totally screwed up way
of doing data Entry.
We are considering Ports to IBX, and Oracle DOA, Dont think this will be too
much problem. We make extensive use of caching both at the AppServer and the
Client side. As you can see I really enjoy MIDAS. The down sides are you
need to design, it is inefficient project management for a small team, it is
hard to stream and manage your own objects, and debugging client and server
simultaneously can be a drag.
Overall the Sanderson Client is a success, and will go Global early next
year.
Some other comments...
Once the team gets over three people you start to pick up development
efficiency gains because you can modularise a lot more, and give your team
members seperate projects to work on.
I cant stress enough the importance of an initial R&D phase where you design
your Server Threading strategy very carefully. We use multiple RDM's for
logical business partitioning, and each RDM inherits from a base RDM
Midas bigest enimy is its lack of documentation..
RDM inheritance is important to understand.
Traffic considerations are important...ALWAYS use small datasets...
Sync is a real issue to contend with
Feel free to pass anything on you like. Overall, we really like MIDAS. I see
MIDAS as a strategy - as much as a technology.
If you go with the flow it is quite easy, and good. Just like BDE and other
strategies, if you go with it it works for you. Fight it and you'l hate it.
I
guesse thats my bigest advice to anyone.
-------------------------------------------------
Hope that helps - and thanks to Tony! As usual, if you want to talk to any
of us here at Inprise, PLEASE DO! Annie's the one to talk to regarding
anything money related (bulk licences, pricing etc, tho Oli is also one to
talk to about that), and Richard or myself about anything of a technical
nature.
Nic.
--
Nic Wise - [EMAIL PROTECTED] / Inprise/Borland New Zealand
main line: 09.360.0231 / ddi: 09.360.6713 / cell: 021.676.418
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
