Javier Borrajo wrote:
> But since you raise the fat client issue, Win2000 has a revamped
> Installer that makes automatic network installation, repair and
> upgrade of client apps so easy and versatile it takes away a lot of
> the reasons to develop so called Java thin-clients -- a Java applet
> may be one of the fattest clients you can find, with above 20 MB RAM
> usage including the browser, and well above of 1 MB of
> downloadable code each time the client starts.
The fat client issue is not one of RAM size but of download size. Thorough OO
designs in smalltalk (and there's no reason to suppose Java is more compact)
frequently result in 10-50 megabyte images. If one of these has be deployed on a
1000 workstations, WAN and even LAN bandwidth becomes an issue and the only
practical solution is to download overnight. If the download fails fully or
partially, or if an emergency fix has to be applied during the day, the
disruption to business is massive.
(The odd thing to me is that although the download size problem has been around
for years and is solvable, no-one has yet brought a solution to market. I know
it's solvable because in 1994 I lead a team which designed and built a solution
as part of a bigger product which IBM decided not to market. Effectively our
solution was a Client Application Server - though we did not call it that. It
supported pooling of connections and security contexts for multiple client
applications on a single desktop machine, plus coordination services between
client applications. It allowed a powerful integrated desktop consisting of
multiple small applications which could be upgraded individually and downloaded
non-disruptively.)
Sorry if this last bit was off-topic - it was intended to be
thought-provoking:-)
Ian McCallion
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