Bruce Bruen
bbruen at bigpond.com
Wed Jul 30 17:36:52 CDT 2003
Well, Having had the winge, I suppose I'd better propose a desired solution. IMHO, what is needed is a truly lightweight application runtime that can be installed on various desktops providing the basic infrastructure to enable a tuple based information set to be displayed in a functional format suitable for human user interfaces. That is, a runtime that supports secure, structured, data-only transfer across TCP/IP and which locally transforms that data into a dataset that can be displayed or printed. For the sake of the argument, lets call the data transport mechanism "XML". Instead of the runtime containing a heavy load of (lets call it) "desktop database" functionality it would only contain some sort of coded buiness logic (lets call it p-code), a high speed interpreter and a set of <bold red italic 72 point> B A S I C </emphasis> UI components. However, I note that the UI components provided by HTML 3/4 do not cope well with tuple based data, they do need to be extended. Application components (p-code) could be distributed on a download once - use many basis. Including any necessary (so-called) web services. The technology exists today to enable secure application loading, data transfer and transactional control. We (developers) need a business logic level development environment to enable delivery of business benefit software. What I am talking about, of course, is an Access with the db part stripped out and replaced with an easy to use XML based data transfer bottom end. However, as I will shortly expand upon, I don't think VB/VBA/VBS/ASP are the fruit of the true vine. I have recently looked (very briefly) at the ruby language. If it lives up to all its claims, my golly gosh, it's a huge step out of the current fight with the technical level application development problems that plague us today. There is not one current manistream development language that truly lives up to the promises of OODD. For example, VB doesn't inherit; C++ does not protect or garbage collect properly, Java has non-object typeing; etc. In short, these languages are still leaving us with buggy applications that are difficult to support in changing business environments. Developers have to spend too much time looking at technical difficulties rather than business logic. Look at AccessD mail lately, if I'm not reading it at too much of an angle, the vast majority of questions handled by the list are technical - not business logic level issues. Or is it that we, of AccessD, are so adept at handling business logic problems that the only problems we have are technical. Somehow I think not. Hence my short query re hta. I really thought this was a fantastic step forward in net based application taming. A client stored page that ran on a level of the IE intfrastructure that removed the www cr*p (the bits unnecessary to a business application) and presented a clean, albeit very standard, interface. And, while I'm on that soapbox, who in their right minds needs half the UI noodledust that is floating around web based apps today. My <insert deity of choice>! If I'm looking at a couple of hundred, or even a couple of dozen, totally similar transactions a day I DO NOT SEE ALL THE CR*P JUST THE DATA. And this applies whether I'm using the data as an operator or an information consumer... I went to the supermarket last week. The checkouts now have decent sized customer facing screens that list each scanned item as it gets swiped. SUPERB! I can now see when I'm not being charged the expected price. BUT SOME IDIOT OF A MARKETER got SOME EVEN BIGGER IDIOT OF A DEVELOPER to use 85% of the screen to show me, randomly, either a pretty picture of a landscape, an advertisement for something that I'm not going back into the store to buy, or a PICTURE OF THE ITEM THAT HAS JUST BEEN SCANNED. I just cannot comprehend the mentality that decided that I need a picture of some (digitally enhanced) carrots rather than the name of the item, its unit price, the units scanned and the total price. ESPECIALLY WHEN THERE ARE SOME REAL 3-D EXTREMELY CARROT LIKE OBJECTS ON THE BENCH IN FRONT OF ME. I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN WHAT CARROTS LOOK LIKE BETWEEN THE GROCERY SECTION AND THE CHECKOUT. I just cant understand how they can come up with these timewasting, moneywasting, ABSOLUTELY USELESS pieces of, for want of a better word, functionality. My bank, after two years of market surveying customers, finally did what they were asked and replaced a java based bill payment system that took 5 web pages and had every damn bell and whistle that the stupid programmer could think of - including animations for God's sake - with a simple 2 page (entry and confirmation) app that now lets us pay bills in 15 seconds not 2 minutes. The new page has labels, textboxes and combo boxes, two buttons and that's all. It looks 10 times neater, runs 10 times faster and guess what - it provides 100% of the functionality required and 0% of the "functionality" not required. The ONLY image on the page is the bank's logo, which I will excuse. There are NO spinners, tabs, dancing buttons, or technicolour dreamcoat iconic (moronic) buttons asking me whether I want to get done over again today. I don't know how much of the supermarket chain's network bandwidth is being used up by the pictorical polution but I'd wager it's a significant amount. When the hypertext paradigm was first expounded, there were only 4 or 5 or so widgets. If we expand that set just a bit more to give us some easy to use row handling widgets, for example a self-populating multicolumn list that knew which row had just been clicked, or (bliss) a self-populating treeview............................ Bruce -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Lawrence (AccessD) Sent: Wednesday, 30 July 2003 3:40 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com Hi Bruce: You have made some excellent points. I am current working in an Oracle product office. The DB is Oracle but the client end is distributed, to intranet users through an installed component called jinitiator. This component must be first installed on each station before the users can access the database interface. The middle-tier is of course Java. In order for any user to access functionality beyond DHTML/XML/CSS/JavaScript etc. other components must be installed at the client's station. This is the position that Java now has and .Net framework is working towards. <observation mode on> The next versions of Windows will most assuredly have .Net Frame well installed... a very tricky position to be in seeing the current sensitivity of competing businesses and governments, all of which will scream 'blue murder'. MS may be placed in the uncomfortable position of delivering and assuring compatibility of a host of competitors products, on to it's new desktops. <observation mode off> A product like PHP/Perl/ColdFusion etc. can provide no more functionality to a user than can be delivered through the common Brower interface. (Interesting aside; Perl can be installed on virtually any computer and can give the functionality of a super 'Free' multi-user, multi-tasking DOS on steroids. It's binary and all the bell and whistles are about 50MB; small by today's standards. I have it running on my Windows98 station and it is great fun.) Jim PS I am not a anti-MS person. I personally think .Net is great but I have to be pragmatic. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Bruce Bruen Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9:33 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com IMHO Probably the biggest PITA about pHP is its major strength - inline coding. There are two views held, one that PHP is a scriptiong language that appears in an HTML file and the other that PHP is a script that has HTML constants in it. I think both views are valid. That said, and to get back to the point, the strength of ASP.net is the separation of the code and the HTML/XML/XHTML/etc. At least within the IDE. At the end of the day the product produced by the script is a single instance of an http transmittable document. Therein lies the lack of concern whether PHP is OO or not - if 98% of the output is achieveable through non-OO coding and 98% of the output is a single instance, and very temporal, document then why impose object mentality on it. Sure and enough, the server side handling of data and particularly data updates would benefit from a reusable object language - but there you have PEAR, which I am reliably informed is very OO. Drew sometime commented that he uses dll objects extensively in building web based front ends to dbs. Foine and dandy - the PHP proponents would rather use scripted PHP/PEAR components to achieve the same result. Finally, don't forget PHP produces HTML documents - viewable on browsers whether or not the client has PHP. I have a fear that a large part of .net is going to require 5 terrabytes of M$ componentry installed on the client side in order to view the built pages. I was extrememly P**SS*D off to find out that the office web controls require so much crap loaded on the client side that they may as well just use the application locally. B -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Haslett, Andrew Sent: Wednesday, 30 July 2003 1:40 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com Sure, its implementing a couple of OO concepts, but its still a Hybrid language. It doesn't support the four 'biggies' of pure OO languages like Java and the .Net breed and cannot be considered a pure OO language. That said, a large majority of web coders don't know or will never use OO principals in their applications and wiwo viewsll stick to procedural programming, so it won't matter! Cheers, Andrew -----Original Message----- From: Jim Lawrence (AccessD) [mailto:accessd at shaw.ca] Sent: Wednesday, 30 July 2003 12:57 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com Andrew: You are partly right but the current version is Object-Oriented. See the article: http://www.devx.com/webdev/Article/10007 written by the actual developers of PHP. Jim -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Haslett, Andrew Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 7:49 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com PHP is not object orientated.. -----Original Message----- From: Arthur Fuller [mailto:artful at rogers.com] Sent: Wednesday, 30 July 2003 1:42 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com I'm pretty sure that is an accurate percentage. Why? Because far and away the most popular web server on the market is Apache. No one else is even close. Add to that the Linux factor (almost all large sites use Linux not IIS), the ease of combining php and Linux (and MySQL, for data-driven sites), and the cost factor, and it all adds up to a formidable combination. Notice that Dreamweaver MX added support for php+mySQL in the latest rev. Php is easy to learn and is object oriented. There are free on-line courses and stuff available, too. Not that I have any current clients who use this combination. Most are small businesses and are afraid to go Linux, or even to combine Oses. But at home I have one Linux-dedicated box and another Win2K Advanced Server that houses an instance of both MySQL and SQL 2K, so I can run .NET from one workstation and Apache/php/mySQL from another. A. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Lawrence (AccessD) Sent: July 29, 2003 1:18 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com Hi All: I have seen a recent claim, have no way to validate it but the assertion goes as follows: PHP as a server based web language now has almost forty percent of the general market... This claim seems outrageous but that would leave PHP holding the largest single market share of that genre of products. Jim -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Marcus, Scott (GEAE, Contractor) Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 10:00 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com John, Thanks for your optimism on .Net. All I ever here are negative things about MS products (which I make my living with). It is a good point you make about being on the leading edge. I think the same way. I just get discouraged cause very few tend to agree with that statement. It seems that most think that software development will eventually be all off shore. I say that moving off shore totally won't happen (small business needs physical presence). JM2C Scott -----Original Message----- From: jcolby at colbyconsulting.com [mailto:jcolby at colbyconsulting.com] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 12:49 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com Scott, >My only doubts about .Net is that I'm not seeing very many job postings >for .Net developers (but allot more than Access development). I am seeing more and more .net openings, at least more and more "ya need the kitchen sink and oh, by the way, ya need .net too" ads. I get the feeling that not many companies really understand it yet - momentum. However my feelings are that MS has spent a TON of money on developing the concept, and are pushing .net big time. If they put their muscle behind it, it won't be long till it's a "requirement" to get a job and I want to be on the leading edge of this one. PLUS, the .net framework is truly impressive in the capability it gives me "out of the box". >You must have read the same article as me (actually editors comments). >I'm leaning VB.Net first and then adding C# to my skills. Seems silly to me that C# pulls in more money. Yea, it is silly considering the reality of the new .net environment. I'm betting that it won't be long before managers start to listen to M$ saying that any language is equally capable and stop paying more for C#. There are still a very small handful of indirection capabilities that C# has that VB doesn't, and if you need them then fine, go there. Otherwise VB is probably faster to get something up and running in. And finally, no, my framework has no equivalents in .net for the simple reason that my framework is about making form development in Access easier (even more RAD). Since .net is so very different from Access, much of what I do simply doesn't even make sense in .net. For example, I have a function in my framework that keeps a record selector combo synced to the form (bound) and the form synced to the combo. It turns out that in .net if you set the form (or a data grid) and a combo to the same dataset, selecting a record in the combo will just cause the two things to stay in sync (be on the same record). AFAICT, that is because the combo actually sets a "current record" property in the dataset object. Another example, in my framework I want to prevent the user from moving into a subform if the main form goes to the new record. .Net doesn't even HAVE subforms. Things like that. I am in the process of rewriting something that would "make sense" to port - my Sysvars. Assuming that I leave my error handlers in place, that port is really fairly straightforward. However I don't really have much hope of "just porting" my framework. In the end though, there is enough work to be done making .net as "database friendly" as Access that I am sure I will have plenty of similar projects. John W. Colby www.colbyconsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Marcus, Scott (GEAE, Contractor) Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 12:03 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com John, You must have read the same article as me (actually editors comments). I'm leaning VB.Net first and then adding C# to my skills. Seems silly to me that C# pulls in more money. Like you, that is why I'm going to learn it also. Have you seen any silly job postings like "C# developer with 5 years experience..."? Have you found that your Access framework already has equivalents in .Net framework? I'm not far enough into .Net to have an opinion yet. I can say that if it is similar to how Java works, I won't like it. I hear that C# is very close to Java. What I've learned in VB.Net so far seems pretty straight forward. My only doubts about .Net is that I'm not seeing very many job postings for .Net developers (but allot more than Access development). Scott -----Original Message----- From: jcolby at colbyconsulting.com [mailto:jcolby at colbyconsulting.com] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 11:47 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD]OT: C# was no-ip.com Scott, Not yet, though I think I will end up there. I'm thinking that learning VB.Net and more importantly the .net framework FIRST will be most useful to me. The framework is massive and being comfortable with that is a requirement regardless of the language you then use for your programming. Once that is done I will probably move to C# for the simple reason that the polls indicate C# programmers get better money. I did a controller project down in Mexico in a custom 'C' language so it isn't totally foreign. Again though, the whole point of the .Net concept is that the framework really provides about 90% of the functionality and it is used EXACTLY the same regardless of the language you use. The language itself is really a thin veneer over the top of the framework. Even things like variables are framework objects so that any .net language can literally pass their variables back and forth without the silly problems like you see with VB and C not treating strings the same way. John W. Colby www.colbyconsulting.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ ******************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and may contain information protected by law from disclosure. 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