How's the serenity! (was Re: Processing Ideas Needed:)

Hi Wilm,

My universe has been stateless since my days as an ACMS programmer.

You mean that other context-rich, connection-oriented architecture? But I
didn't see anyone suggest this to Chuck. (Still with the death of ACMSxp
maybe they're all keeping their heads down at HP? Do they ever do anything
else one might ask.) But please let me draw the distinction between your
tasks being "stateless" and the ACMS transaction monitor maintaining a fully
pre-authorized and statefull connection to the client. Please desist from
attempting to draw an analogy between what ACMS (or Tier3) is doing and that
document-serving, wam-bang-than-you-mam, pile of *** that is HTTP and all
web-browsers who sail in her! You do see the difference don't you?

Anyway, you've developed with ACMS, fantastic! Then *surely* you must agree
that the bull*** ACMS workspace size restriction has always been a pain in
the arse? What about result sets? All Employees with names starting with
"SM"? All transactions for August? Why should you be forced into the same
artificial "paging" paradigms that are ubiquitous today? What if you had a
full-duplex conversational pipe as the only parameter to your ACMS task, and
server affinity could be controlled at message granularity? For example, one
request might generate a one row response, another might generate a 1000 row
response, but if server and client were cooperating on a row-by-row basis,
then the client could be enriching rows for presentation while the server
was busy retrieving them. Or maybe, the server needs additional information
from the client and the association between client and server needs to span
more than one message exchange? Would such a flexible architecture not be
desirable? Me? I like to send the *complete* result set down to the client
and then let them page/scroll through it or sort it or whatever they like?

But what about the privileges that you had to give ACMS servers? What about
the DCL servers that were used to browse files with TPU that could easily be
turned into startup-altering assasins? Also, you were told what Username you
were performing work for, but you wern't given a t3$persona_assume service
that could be called from an unprivileged account. How can you call Rdb's
"Set Session Authorization" with only a Username?

What about ADU, UDU, *CDD*, TDFs, SWLUP, ACMSATR, Debugging the server?
(I'll skip the CP, and of course the "They tried to make me use the
DECforms, and I said a No! No! No!")

What about interrupting a server that's gone AWOL 'cos you gave it some
dodgy selection criteria? Imagine empowering the end-user with a hot-abort
button - Sound good? Doesn't XMLHttpRequest have an abort() method? Or does
that filth just abort the client waiting for the request and leave the
server to trundle away for hours? (And let the client kick-off another
resource hungry trawl of the database)

I
did not have to learn anything new about transactional programming and
webservices when web services arrived.

Excellent! Please show me one example of a Webservice on VMS updating RMS,
Rdb, Oracle in a two-phase commit with and database on any other platform.
(Could be doable with weblogic/tuxedo I suppose but I doubt it)

Some of my younger collegues
though were very surprised that records could change after they first
accessed them in their (SOAP, AJAX, PERL, ...) program. >

The analogy that worked with a couple of programmers at an ACMS-using bank
in the UK was that of the Hotel, and of leaving a pair of ones shoes in the
closet after checking out. How you were more likely than not to get a
different room next time, and even if it was the same room, it was highly
unlikely that your shoes would still be there. I made it sound a lot more
patronising than that :-)

Those who ignore
the past are forced to re-live it.

So true! Bring it on :-) Certainly a refreshing change from those ignoring
the present and wallowing in the mud.

Cheers Richard Maher

"Wilm Boerhout" <w5OLD.PAINTboerhout@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:46d17bd5$0$25482$ba620dc5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
on 26-8-2007 14:25 Richard Maher wrote...

[snip]

I am a forgiving person(a).

Give me time Wilm, give me time :-)


Since this is a weekend at least on this end of the timezone chain, I'll
give you all the time 'til Monday.

[snip, snip, snip, snap, snip snippety snip]


In this our stateless universe,

NO! "Your" stateless universe Wilm "YOUR"! Thus is the world as YOU have
made it. (Or at least perceive it.) Take off your bull*** HTTP blinkers
for
a while and smell the coffee! And other mixed metaphors :-)


My universe has been stateless since my days as an ACMS programmer. I
did not have to learn anything new about transactional programming and
webservices when web services arrived. Some of my younger collegues
though were very surprised that records could change after they first
accessed them in their (SOAP, AJAX, PERL, ...) program. Those who ignore
the past are forced to re-live it.

/Wilm

Now playing: Amy Winehouse - You sent me flying


.