Re: Setting bind variables or defines from applications?

Jim Kennedy wrote:

> My example is just a very very clear example. You encounter the same
> problem with GUI apps that have a lot of users. In this same application
> the GUI part was coded with bind variables and array fetch etc. This
> allowed us to scale the application to hundreds of users on very very modest
> hardware. (eg hundreds of users on NT on intel 486 CPU servers with SCSI
> drives, which was pretty standard at the time) So sure one can write
> ineffecient code and just make sure the hardware is big enough to handle it.
Exactly. So, my boss is faced with three or four times the development time due to a less efficient programming language and the dream of "hundreds of users", which is about as likely as us actually employing "hundreds" of layout engineers when we have six and do well with them. Sorry, but here development resources are more expensive than hardware so they are whose efficency we maximise. And also in our environment we have a fair idea where to make applications scalable and user number is not one of them.
OTOH, if we need a server we more or less just have to pull one from the assembly line and pay inhouse prices.

> I have heard the old excuse "we don't have time to write efficient code; we
> will fix it later." Performance and security isn't something you bolt on
> later. It is something you include from the begining or pay a very high
> price later to retrofit it.

If those applications ever get as much exposure to users as you think, requirements will have changed sufficiently to warrant a complete rewrite. For instance, more users typicalle means totally different and really specified requirements on tool abilities, customisation and such. Also with "hundreds of users" it means the application has to run on PC's managed by our IT department and they do only standard microsoft stuff. It's totally out of the question for us to go around and run runInstaller on every machine so the application has to run without any oracle installation on client pc's and will probably use the application express webserver for database access. (Thank you oracle, for that idiotic installation mechanism. Why can't you do msi's like everyone else? It's costing you clients!) Overdesigning is not exactly good practice either.

Lots of Greetings!
Volker Received on Sun Apr 23 2006 - 01:29:07 CDT