Chris writes:

>David Darnell recommends an interesting migration route but this is a
>route which IMO is flawed because, apart from ODBC being yet another
>proprietary technology, it is limited by its inefficiencies.

  'O'pen 'D'ata'B'ase 'C'onnectivity (ODBC) is simply an application
programming interface based on the ISO Call-Level Interface (CLI).  I
would venture to guess that there are still many more packages that
interface with ODBC than with J2EE.  As far as being inefficient, you
need to place that in context.  Is it what I would choose to transfer
terabytes worth of information from one database to another?  No,
but I wouldn't choose a J2EE application either if given a choice :)

  David's original statement is very valid and our company has done exactly
that for several customers in the last few years.  A web-based application
(regardless of the middleware used) has large benefits to the customer
when it comes to "server independence".  If you write the application
using products and procedures that are (to quote one of my customers)
"Back end agnostic", then if the time comes where that back-end must
be changed, the front-end remains pretty much untouched.  Especially
now that most e3000 users are going to be forced into some flavor of
migration to another platform, this represents a way to continue your
application development without sacrificing that effort when migration
day arrives.  If you choose to write that web-app in Java, then J2EE
seems to be a promising way to go.  If on the other hand you choose to
use something other than JAVA, then you need to decide how you're going
to interface with that back-end system and ODBC is one of a number of
valid interfaces to choose from.  I can understand your bias given your
company, but J2EE is only one potentially viable solution.

Respectfully,
Michael L Gueterman
SIG Web co-chair
Easy Does It Technologies LLC
http://www.editcorp.com
voice: 888.858.EDIT or 573.368.5478
fax:   573.368.5479
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