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multi-national development environment

From: The Raven <wsmc_at_flashmail.com>
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 11:18:05 +1100
Message-ID: <ase8k7$1bce$1@otis.netspace.net.au>


Hi,

I hope this is the right place to ask the following, if not I apologise. Please feel free to recommend a more appropriate forum.

Firstly, I'm not an IT or Oracle guru just the bunny who's been given this problem to manage. I'm trying to sort out a problem involving setting up a development environment that spans several countries. So far the internal "expert" opinion differs and is dubious in both it's accuracy and political bias.

What I'd like to know is, after reading the info below, what are other organisations doing and what would you recommend? Remember I'm seeking a direction/solution but won't be the one who implements it so, all I need is enough techno-babble to understand the options and how to propose them to the techies.

A development environment exists on a network in one country. Developers are using standard Oracle tools with Sourcesafe etc thrown in.

Developers are required for some local projects, elsewhere in the world, and they need access to the central development environment across the internet.

At present, there are only one or two "foreign" developers (both in separate countries) and they are obtaining access via PC Anywhere into a host workstation at the central location. Due to time differences there is no overlap but the speed is somewhat slow. I'm advised that part of the speed problem (ignoring typical internet issues) is related to the technology in PC Anywhere.

One foreign site is going to have multiple developers wanting to access the central environment. A VPN is being established for that office and it is/was envisaged that this would be used by these foreign developers to access the central location.

Obviously a VPN type environment is going to require additional Oracle licenses and will generate more network traffic than PC Anywhere. However, it's reported that the VPN will be 20 times slower than PC Anywhere (which I seriously doubt) and that PC Anywhere should be retained method. Of course, this would required additional PC Anywhere hosts at the central location.

Another option has been suggested in the form of separate development environment at each site using some form of replication/mirroring to do configuration management across all sites. This is probably more expensive but would give the best balance of performance/productivity.

So, I'm told there are three options:

  1. PC Anywhere to the central environment. Somewhat slow and requires multiple host workstations (effectively requiring 2 PC for each foreign developer - 1 local & 1 central).
  2. VPN to central environment. Supposedly traffic intensive to the point of being useless and, requires some licenses at the foreign end.
  3. Mirrored/Replicated development environments at each site. Unknown if its possible but can't see why not. Probably the most expensive solution. Are there issues for software configuration management.

Any other options and what are your thoughts?

Oh, at the risk of showing my ignorance, would Citrix be something worth considering?

Regards

The Raven Received on Sun Dec 01 2002 - 18:18:05 CST

Original text of this message

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