Re: Does Oracle 10g make the Application Server (almost) insignificant?
From: Roel <rcf_at_qqqwxs.nl>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:48:38 +0100
Message-ID: <4031f182$0$565$e4fe514c_at_news.xs4all.nl>
>>In my belief the valid reasons for having an application server/layer are:
>>- fail-over/system availability: the application layer can be divided
>>over many different nodes; failure of one will not result in system failure.
>>- 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
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:48:38 +0100
Message-ID: <4031f182$0$565$e4fe514c_at_news.xs4all.nl>
Dave wrote:
> "rcf<_no.SPAM_>" <"rcf<_no.SPAM_>"_at_wxs.nl> wrote in message news:<402bdf50$0$1583$e4fe514c_at_dreader15.news.xs4all.nl>... >
>>In my belief the valid reasons for having an application server/layer are:
>>- fail-over/system availability: the application layer can be divided
>>over many different nodes; failure of one will not result in system failure.
>>- 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
> > > > Roel - > > I have wondered about this myself from time to time. I am by no means > an expert, but the database is optimized for persistance and > serving/processing information (though Oracle has a lot of additional > built-in features.) An application server (I'm thinking in terms of a > J2EE app server) is a more generic code container. If your application > is mostly INSERT/UPDATING/DELETING/SELECTING, then you may be right. > But what if you needed a real-time chat environment, or if you wanted > to implement some specific caching algorithm, or you wanted a client > request to spawn a multi-threaded process to do many things in > parallel. Perhaps you could implement this in PL/SQL, but would it be > the best place to do it? I'm not sure... > > Dave
Dave, thank you for reaction. I agree that for some applications that are not data-centric (like a chat application) using PL/SQL whould not be wise. Using Java or .Net would be a better choice.
But as most Oracle customers have/build data-centric applications, the value of the Oracle Application Server (or any other application server in this situation) becomes very questionable in my view.
Regards,
Roel Received on Tue Feb 17 2004 - 11:48:38 CET