Does Oracle 10g make the Application Server (almost) insignificant?

From: rcf<_no.SPAM_> <_no.SPAM_>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 21:17:26 +0100
Message-ID: <402bdf50$0$1583$e4fe514c_at_dreader15.news.xs4all.nl>



[Quoted] [Quoted] In my belief the valid reasons for having an application server/layer are:
[Quoted] - fail-over/system availability: the application layer can be divided
over many different nodes; failure of one will not result in system failure.
[Quoted] - scalability: the application layer is deployed on a number of
different, relatively cheap nodes - this number can easily be increased.
- load balancing: this prevents one node to be a bottleneck while others
have nothing to do.
(But maybe there are more reasons...)
So, the fact that the application layer is deployed on many, cheap nodes (servers) allows it to offer the services that made it imperative within the 3-tier concept.

BUT:
Since the introduction of Oracle10g, the typical enterprise scale database hardware will shift from one very expensive, high-end server to a farm of standardized, commodity priced components/servers. This means that you no longer need an application layer to have a scalable, fault tolerant system with flexible load balancing: the database layer can do this for you now! (Besides, the fault tolerance of the application layer wasn't of much use if you're database goes down.)

So my conclusion is that for many – if not most – Oracle Internet applications, the application layer will become less important with the introduction of Oracle10g. The data layer will take over! Apart from some simple tasks like connection pooling and processing XML into a presentation format or a web service – and even these tasks can be done by the Oracle database! - there no longer seems to be a valid reason for having a robust application server.

I'm very interested in other people's views on this subject.

Regards,

Roel Received on Thu Feb 12 2004 - 21:17:26 CET

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