> The company I'm working on is considering about starting web development
> with some sort of database backend, and now we need to decide the
> platform,
> include web server, development tool/language, and mayby operating system
> as well. I'm sure many of you out there are doing web development. What
> are you using? Delphi? ASP?
> Any options and suggestions please?
OK, your options are (well, some of them, I'm bound to miss a few):
Delphi: ISAPI DLL's (IIS), WebHub, ASP Objects in Delphi + ASP.
Java: Servlets, JSP
Other: ASP, ColdFusion, etc.
My recomendation currently is Java and JSP - you can write a very scalable
app in a short space of time, and you have the option to use highly scalable
solutions (albeit expensive) like EJB and (less expensive) CORBA. I have
written a 'full' e-c system (b-to-b/c) using JSP, Java, Interbase with CORBA
as the transport, and I found it to be very easy, fast, stable and scalable.
OTOH, others (Peter @ SPIS, the guys at OrderGenie, Steve Barker with
Autonet.co.nz and others come to mind) have done impressive things with
WebHub, ISAPI DLL's and the like, as needless to say, everyone and their dog
is using ASP :)
> We do not want to write web page that requires many plugins, and possibly
> not even Java plugin. Ideally plain web browser will do, such as standard
> installation of NetScape, IE etc.
That all comes down to what you write your code like - I'm an HTML advocate,
and I dont use anything other than straight HTML (including CSS :) ). Java
is too non-standard (ie, does your browser have Java1.0, 1.1, 1.2? or the MS
VM? etc), ActiveX is a security bomb waiting to happen, Flash is cool if you
are an artist etc. ou can do cool things with HTML tho.
> We would like to know the likely cost for development environment and
> deployment.
Needless to say, you'll need DB licenses on top of this. Interbase 5.6, for
eg, is about 4.4K for an internet license.
ASP: copy of Visual Interdev and Delphi. No deployment costs, (delphi has
non, ASP uses NT)
JSP: copy of HomeSite (or a text edit - works for ASP too), copy of JBuilder
(foundation works OK for non-EJB or non-CORBA development, otherwise
JBuilder 3.5 Enterprise) (depends on what you do - free JSP servers are
available, run under linux etc if you want, but there are also ones that
cost $$ etc. JBuilder has no license costs for beans you develope AFAIK, EJB
(Inprise App Server) is in the ORDER of about 15-20K, but if you want to go
this route, CALL ANNIE! Its definatly POA :), A Visibroker license is about
4K I think.
WebHub: WebHub license (www.href.com or www.spis.co.nz I think), Delphi
license. Webhub has deployment costs last time I looked at it (per server)
HTH.
N
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