Thanks for the voice of reason David.

When you say "turn off" the other webapps, what do you mean? Is it as simple as 
taking them out of the ofbiz-component.xml files?

Also, I would still need to set different prefixes in entityengine.xml, correct?

----- Original Message -----
From: "David E Jones" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 12:57:04 PM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain
Subject: Re: best web framework


Depending on what the more specific requirements are the usual (and by  
FAR the easiest) way to do this is to use the same software on the  
ecommerce and back-end servers, but have configuration differences so  
that only the ecommerce webapp is available on ecommerce sever (ie  
turn off the other webapps), and only the non-ecommerce applications  
are enabled on the back-end servers (unless you want to use them for  
ecommerce staging as well, then you can certainly leave that on, but  
that server is generally ONLY accessible internally of course).

In this scenario all app servers are communicating with the database  
server and coordinate that way. There is no need for communication  
between the servers except for the Entity Engine distributed cache  
clearing.

If you use a pattern of a webapp server that talks to an app server  
that talks to a database you have an extra level of remote  
communications and that will significantly slow down your response  
times... as well as add the need for LOTS of coding! There is only one  
reason I know of for doing such things: a very stubborn person with  
his hands on the purse strings. That's it, there is NO good technical  
or business reason for such things. Some claim greater scalability,  
but real-world testing proves otherwise.

-David


On Apr 15, 2009, at 11:14 AM, Vince Clark wrote:

> Our client has a requirement to deploy their ecommerce storefront on  
> a physically separate server from the back office apps. We have been  
> experimenting with other frameworks and integrating via web services  
> for some time, and this requirement pushes up the urgency.
>
> Options we are considering:
>
>    • Use OFBiz MVC framework to build the ecommerce site and deploy  
> it on a separate server. Use RMI to communicate between two OFBiz  
> instances.
>    • Tapestry - Java based, so maybe RMI is still an option. But not  
> sure if that really makes it any easier than using web services.
>    • Symfony - we have prototyped this and exposed things like user  
> login and shopping cart via web services on the OFBiz side. Have  
> tested this with Axis2 and Mule.
>    • DJango - Just looking into this.
>
> Our primary motivation for going with Symfony or DJango is to keep  
> the web tier as light weight as possible. It would be all about  
> presentation, and would consume all functionality from OFBiz.
>
> Looking forward to feedback from the community on this topic.

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