Subject: From: Date:

Re: [ECS] ECS/Linux ? Ingo Dean Sun, 13 Jun 1999 17:04:33 -0400

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Ingo Pakleppa wrote:

...

> - don't port to Linux. Port to Java. That gives you the flexibility to
> quickly come out with a Mac version or a PC version or (you'll probably
> need a little C code for controlling the hardware, so the Java code won't
> run on other platforms out of the box). The best Java development
> environment I saw so far is VisualAge by IBM.

I started to say I disagree with this, but then I changed my mind...  I was
going to say that LINUX is nice and stable, and that Java isn't yet... but then
I realized that that's just not true.

I'm in the midst of a development project with uses a three-tiered approach:
MySQL database, Java server, and Java GUI clients.  The server is incredibly
stable, the GUI a little less so, but improving.  And the forced exception
model really forces you to write tight code.

So, in short, I agree with Ingo, you should consider Java.

Of course, you'll be more limited in hardware support, but most things now plug
into the serial port anyway, there aren't too many things that come only as
internal cards.  And it will then run on almost anything with reasonable
horsepower.

And remember that both are moving targets, much faster than Windows, in fact.

> - if you decided against Java and port to Linux, start with your DOS
> version, not your Windows version. The Windows API was deliberately kept
> VERY incompatible with Unix, while the DOS API is still somewhat similar.

I'd recommend that you separate the engine from the GUI using standard sockets
as the interface.  This way you can have that remote interface everyone wants.
If you do the GUI in Java, you can even have that in a browser then.

> - you also asked about ISAPI scripts: same thing, don't use ISAPI but
> instead CGI. ISAPI is a lot faster - but since hopefully you won't see
> hundreds and hundreds of people retrieving your phone messages at the same
> time, that is hardly an issue. The big advantage of CGI is that it is not
> tied to just one Web server, but can run on any - for instance, Apache is
> still the most popular one, but it won't run ISAPI (Apache is available for
> NT but most popular on Unix).
>

Again, I agree.  Stick with CGI, and industry standard, not a Bill Gates
"standard".

...

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