[GLLUG] Best Web/Desktop Programming solution (...)

Eric Miller eric.john.miller at gmail.com
Tue Apr 19 10:08:03 EDT 2005


LAMP - Linux+Apache+MySql+PHP would be my choice if you were only
running web based applications and possibly PostgreSQL in place of MySql
so you could call functions (stored procedures) instead of putting SQL
statements directly into code. It's portable to IIS. It's stable and
there are plenty of examples to work from. 

The desktop requirement adds a wrinkle to this since you'd like to have
the desktop applications use the same business and data layer as the web
apps. You may be able to do this with PHP (using SOAP web services
perhaps?). However, you may want to consider using mono. From what I
understand, you can use Glade and MonoDevelop as a RAD tool to build the
desktop gui, XSP for the web gui, and then use the same business/data
access layer code for both the web and desktop. It "should" work cross
platform with Windows and IIS.

I'm currently working on a presentation to the LUG for creating cross
platform desktop applications in mono. I'll look into expanding this to
include web applications using the same business/data layer. I wish I
were farther into this so I could give you an answer based on more
experience... 

Eric

On Tue, 2005-04-19 at 09:23 -0400, Hampton, Rodney wrote:
> I'll take the first crack at this.  
> 
> Based on the numerous requirements listed below, php (web)/PHP-gtk
> (desktop) 
> http://gtk.php.net/ and perl (web)/perl-gtk (desktop)
> http://personal.riverusers.com/~swilhelm/gtkperl-tutorial/ should fit.
> 
> Both perl and php will run under IIS with a bit of a performance
> penalty.  You will find that the gtk toolkit will let you build your
> desktop application.  Both perl and php work with several databases,
> can use LDAP, ODBC, SSL, etc.  
> 
> I kind of tend to rule out Java since it doesn't meet the requirements
> for speed nor do I think getting java to work with IIS is going to be
> much fun although it is do-able:
> 
> http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-06-2000/jw-0616-iis.html
> 
> Please don't hurt me.  I don't mean to start a language flame war
> here.
> 
> Rodney Hampton 
> http://www.hamptonandassociates.net 
>  
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Jason Green [mailto:greenja6 at msu.edu] 
> Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 8:50 AM 
> To: linux-user at egr.msu.edu 
> Subject: [GLLUG] Best Web/Desktop Programming solution (...)
> 
> 
> At the risk of starting a major flame war, I'm going to post this  
> question just to get some outside perspectives...
> 
> The IT Department at my company (all 3 of us) is looking to slowly  
> migrate away from our Access 2000 platform to something web-based
> and  
> preferably F/OSS.  We've been happily using MySQL 4 as the backend
> for  
> Access for about 2 1/2 years, and it's worked out quite well.  We
> have  
> quite a lot of semi-advanced front-end applications built in Access
> at  
> the moment, but we'd like to move away from that for various
> reasons.   
> Currently, we haven't made use of any SQL Transaction capabilities,
> so  
> data integrity is always suspect (though not too much - we do some  
> periodic checking, etc.).  All of our applications will be centered  
> around databases.
> 
> We obviously have a ton of options open to us, but there are a few  
> caveats that we need to fill: 
> - Should have a desktop runtime as well as a web-based platform. 
> - Whatever we choose will need a nice pretty GUI for designing forms
> and  
> making minor changes to add fields, etc.  I'm the only one in the  
> department with semi-advanced programming skills, so I usually write
> the  
> nitty gritty functions and the others can design the forms and
> update  
> basic code.  (We've purchased Adobe GoLive 6.0 already, but haven't  
> really used it, if that helps) 
> - The end result needs to work on IIS (yeah, I know...) and
> eventually  
> Apache. 
> - Needs to be able to connect to MySQL, MSSQL, Pervasive v8, MDB (MS  
> Access), and general ODBC. 
> - Needs to support Active Directory (LDAP) security as well as SSL. 
> - Needs to be FAST.  The users are used to Access applications which
> are  
> very quick most of the time.  Most web-based apps have the tendency
> to  
> be quite slow.  95% of all of our traffic will be internal intranet  
> usage on T1's or faster, so Internet lag won't be the bottleneck.
> 
> Once we choose a solution, we'll be slowly migrating each of our  
> applications from Access to the new system, which means a lot of
> code  
> rewriting.   Rapid Application Deployment (regardless of it's
> buzzword  
> status) is somewhat required, hence the GUI IDE requirement.  Some
> of  
> our current forms are quite complex with multiple tabs, linked child  
> forms, and a lot of Event-driven code.  I realize that we'll have to  
> start coding very differently when going web-based, because a large  
> chunk of the code should run at the server level. That's a big
> change  
> for us, since all of our code currently runs at the application
> (Access)  
> level.  Any resources or ideas to ease the migration pain are welcome.
> 
> Sorry for the essentially religious "What's the best tool for this  
> [semi-vague] job" question, but I'm just looking to get some insights
> on  
> what tools and environments everyone here has experience with.
> We've  
> begun looking at options, but not thoroughly yet.  Thanks in advance
> for  
> any help!
> 
> Jason 
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