We have three software products (Manager webbench/recruiter webbench/candidate webbench) for applicant tracking system. We also are going to have three similar products for the staffing industry. Each product is consists of 2 to 3 ND projects. They are all done using ND 4.1.3. What are we going to do? Our current plan is to port it over to ND 5.0.2 early next year (1st Q). I do not expect too much problem doing it. My estimate is about 2 weeks per project from our developers. (ND is currently working on a document in the area of conversion of ND 4.x projects into ND 5.x projects. I think it will be available in 1/2000.) This will solve our problem of supporting existing install base through 2002. If we just have one web site the effort will be small. Unfortunately we sell our software. This means our QA/support/sale etc must pick up this knowledge. Our customer also must spent effort to do this conversion. The total amount of man-hours to be spent will be huge. Six months ago I was depressed. Most of my knowledge in ND will no longer be useful. It was sad to even think about it. Now I am a lot more upbeat. I believe iAS 6.0 will be good for most current ND customers. I believe iAS 6.0 will be good for most people who need a high end application server. Two years ago when I evaluate application servers for my client we have the following conclusion. ND has the best RAD development front end and Kiva have the best core server. Now iAS 6.0 is gong to have some ND component, the Kiva core server and Forte development tool. You cannot ask for a better combination. If they implement the plan well iAS 6.0 can be awesome. iAS 6.0 beta in 1/2000 and GA 3/2000 is perfect as far as schedule is concern. With a new platform you need to spend a lot of time in basic system design. For your application, should you use JSP or severlet or a mixture of both? May be you wanted to use applets. Do you want to just use Java Bean or use EJB or a mixture of both? How should you implement the GUI objects? What is the compromise between a better structure verse shorter times for development. There are many pieces inside J2EE. Most people probably only use a subset of it. And no matter what you use you have to spend some time developing many basic java classes (Java beans or EJBs). That would take some time to do. May be you want to purchase some libraries from other vendors? For our application we will stay with HTML and not use applets. Because we use a lot of graphics (intranet application) most pages will be JSP pages and a few will be servelets. Since we are very database driven we will use mostly EJB. For some functions, which are performance critical, which are not database related we might use simple java beans. For performance reasons we will use a lot of stored procedures. What about conversion of ND projects into iAS 6.0? My understanding is that some conversion tool will be available in 3/2000 to 4/2000 timeframe. It will convert about 60% of the ND code. I will love to see what the output of the conversion tool look like. Personally I may use it as a suggestion only. I probably want to rewrite them and just cut and paste java logics from my ND project. We are not going to convert; we will try to write the next version of the app using iAS 6.0 and J2EE. In the 70’s I was an expert in using Computer Automation computers. In the 80’s I was in the business of connecting IBM mainframe to PC and workstations using SNA, COAX, DFT, Token Ring etc. In the 90’s NetDynamics was a major part of my life. We always treasure the past but the future definitely is going to be exciting. My resolution for the year 2000 is to try to look foreword to what the future will bring and do not look back at what the past could have been. Start a regular exercising program. Lose at least 20 lbs. Be thankful of what I have. _________________________________________________________________________ For help in using, subscribing, and unsubscribing to the discussion forums, please go to: http://www.netdynamics.com/support/visitdevfor.html For dire need help, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
