Path: newssvr20.news.prodigy.com!newsmst01.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!in.100proofnews.com!in.100proofnews.com!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: ramon@conexus.net (Ramon F Herrera) Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.databases.oracle.server Subject: Java client-server: what options are there? Date: 1 Jan 2004 18:40:27 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 53 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.147.122.179 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1073011228 31544 127.0.0.1 (2 Jan 2004 02:40:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 02:40:28 +0000 (UTC) Xref: newssvr20.news.prodigy.com comp.lang.java.programmer:571784 comp.databases.oracle.server:251127 This is an issue that I have been pondering and investigating for years, and I wish there was a book, chapter or URL that covered it. I have to develop client-server systems in which the following is pretty much decided: - The database is Oracle 9iR2 - The server OSs are Solaris and Linux - The clients (a few dozen) are Windows (XP?) - The client side runs on Java Those are the givens, the rest is up for grabs... The main undecided part is: exactly how to realize the client-server connection? That's what I would like to hear and read about. What options do I have? To get the ball rolling, I will share my experiences so far. First, I tried the JDBC approach, with a standalone application. There was a stored procedure in the server, and it was called from the client. The cons were: the size of the JDBC being much larger than my app, and there was also the issue of performance. I feel that I should move more of the functionality and heavy duty processing to the server side, where I can have plenty of horsepower. My second attempt was a Java applet which got its data through CGI-BIN from an OCI C program running on the server. The performance was pretty good and I'd like to stick with the OCI part but not with CGI-BIN. I just began the third approach: using SSH. The server part is a given since it comes ready in Linux, and I got the Java client part from sshtools.com. I have read about servlets, Tomcat, etc. but it looks like once I get into that stuff (the area seems to be called "Enterprise"), the tools become extremely expensive (for instance I will have to upgrade my $700 Developer JBuilder to a $3500 Enterprise JBuilder). The issue of performance still worries me (I am a speed freak): I wish I could just use the Unix R-commands (rsh, etc.) so all the encrypting-decrypting doesn't get in the way of client performance (my app is Intranet in a trusted environment) but I guess I can live with the more modern, secure, etc., SSH. Thanks very much for sharing your expert insight on this, (and if you are a writer deciding on a topic, I'll bet that this one will sell a lot of books! - anyone from O'Reilly out there?) -Ramon F Herrera