4 Pre-sales questions on Servoy

Release notes for Servoy betas

4 Pre-sales questions on Servoy

Postby bob » Wed Nov 19, 2003 10:15 pm

I've read everything I can find and played with the demo, but I'm still shorthanded on some questions needed for me to determine if servoy will work for me. Sorry if this is out of place, but I haven't received a reponse from more direct channels. I'm very impressed with Servoy so far, so I'm anxious to see if it will fit my needs.

1) Servoy makes it easy but I don't want my competitors to have this advantage too. Can the servoy client be configured such that the end user never sees servoy's brand and only my own? I hate that about filemaker runtimes. Makes the end product look cheap and less custom.

2) Can you have more than one "activated" release at the same time? My product needs to have custom graphics and features for different customers but shares many of the same tables.

3) The only scaling info I have found is that Servoy scales to thousands of users with hardware being the only limit. Okay, I can't afford 1100 G5's. What would I need to support 1000 *simultaneous* users of a CRM type application with high availability.

4) What about failover, load distribution, replication approaches?? Any case studies, clues, or details? I've read that there is a server admin guide with some hints on scaling. There was mention of aa pdf version coming soon back in April. Where do I get it?

Thank you in advance!

Bob
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Postby bob » Thu Nov 20, 2003 12:54 am

10 people have looked, but no replies. If you have any hints to even one of my questions, please don't hold back. I hope to hear from you.

Thank you!

Bob
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Postby admin » Thu Nov 20, 2003 1:31 am

1) Currently not, we are investigating to offer this feature in the future.
2) No, you can have only one active release at the same time. It is fairly easy to implement custom forms for customers in the same solution or have a solution for each customer though.
3) A dual 2 Ghz server with 2 GB of Ram will meet your needs
4) We have planned a version of servoy for next year that will support load-balancing and automatic failover

The server admin guide is currently available in the bookstore at:
http://www2.ondemandmanuals.com/4dcgi/o ... ord=&user=
A pdf version will be posted on our website within 2 weeks.
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Postby Guest » Thu Nov 20, 2003 2:20 am

Thank you for your answers. one follow-up.
admin wrote:3) A dual 2 Ghz server with 2 GB of Ram will meet your needs

Does this assume that the database server is running on a seperate box or is it (I'm hoping) that the database and servoy server are running on a single box together? No seperate webservers either? Am I missing something?
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hardware

Postby bob » Thu Nov 20, 2003 6:41 am

To be clear. For to meet my requirements, do you think I need a the dual 2GHz machine you mention for Servoy server plus another for a database server or are you suggesting it could all be on the one machine? Clearly the actual appplication, schema, data and user interactions are required to be specific, but I'm just wondering what I would need to plan for in hardware to get going.

Another way to ask it is this. If I have a single server for database and servoy that has dual Xeon processors at say 2.8GH and 2GB of ram, what simultaneous user count might I expect for a "normal" application? A box like this with three fast disks and controllers for raid 5 can be had for about $5000. Pretty amazing when you consider the cost of a slower sun box and raid array a couple of years ago - the last time I bought one.
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Postby Bert » Fri Nov 21, 2003 1:16 am

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for your answers. one follow-up.
admin wrote:3) A dual 2 Ghz server with 2 GB of Ram will meet your needs

Does this assume that the database server is running on a seperate box or is it (I'm hoping) that the database and servoy server are running on a single box together? No seperate webservers either? Am I missing something?

You can run them both on a single box or seperate boxes somewhere on the (inter)net.
That's why you can develop a solution on your office connected with a SQL-dbase at your clients office :D

Hope this helps...
Bert de Graaff
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Postby Jan Aleman » Fri Nov 21, 2003 2:24 am

Predicting CPU and memory requirements is a very complex science. It not only depends on the hardware, operating system and software you use but particularly on how you build your software and how your users use it. This is particularly true for your database server. I have seen the same Oracle server being able to serve 2000% (yes 2000 percent) more users after executing a four word command. Servoy is not even close to the amount of black magic you need to run an oracle environment and it's scalability will be fairly lineair if you design it right. If you design and tune your database correctly and design your application to be compliant to run in a 1000 user environment it is achievable to run it on the same box. Keep in mind that how you program it is very important, you can write a solution in any development environment that will bring a system to it's knees with 2 simultaneous users, you can also write a system that will be brilliantly fast even with 10,000 simultaneous users.
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Postby bob » Fri Nov 21, 2003 12:17 pm

Thank you both. The reason I am digging into this is that I have very little experience with thin clients. I'm used to a more traditional web environment where you have a big database server feeding a couple of application servers and then a bunch of webserver boxes out front. Servoy basically eliminates the need for all those webservers since it uses a thin client and then it goes a step further to store it's "files" for the application in the database.

My hunch is that this scenario may be very efficient, but that it makes scaling more difficult. What I mean is that for any given application, the database server will perhaps be the most taxed. Taking servoy and splitting it up amongst several boxes out front may have limited benefit on scaling. If so the talkied about feature of load balancing is irrevelant (though failover would still be a nice feature in a multi-servoy server environment).

So, the good news may be that you can probably start out with a single box, and as you grow, optimize the database and what you allow users to do to support more of them. The bad news is that if there is any truth to what I'm imagining, you need to get a big enterprize level sun box to grow.

Maybe a way around this is to use database replication or clustering technology on the back end, but that stuff is hard.

Also, perhaps servoy's natural tendency to be happy connecting to multiple databases offers another solution? Say that you have a database with a bunch of tables on one server. Suppose that there are some logical groupings of these tables. For example, a CRM application might have contacts and their related tables and orders/invoices and their related tables. Could you have two database servers serving up each set of tables and let servoy handle the joins? The repository would need to be on one box, but perhaps this approach would offer another method to share the load for some solutions?

I'm looking forward to learning more on this topic.

Bob
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Postby bcusick » Fri Nov 21, 2003 6:33 pm

Hi Bob (cool name!) :D ,

The beauty of Servoy is that you can have as many database servers on as many machines running as many different database platforms as you want - and your SOLUTION can still access all of them (and join between them).

So, your Servoy repository database has to be somewhere (any database platform on any machine) and really you only need a Servoy Server that will handle the 1,000 simultaneous users.

Keep in mind the bigger the machines for your database and a strong network infrastructure are needed (like the HTML web-based model you described). Servoy passes very little "over the pipe" - and does intelligent caching at the client - so it's even MORE efficient than a traditional, disconnected HTML-based web application.

Hope this helps,

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Postby Guest » Fri Nov 21, 2003 9:55 pm

Thanks all. This is getting interesting. While I don't think servoy is a silver bullet, it does look like it a great prototyping environment for thin client web apps. Afterall, isn't this rapid development what got us onto filemaker in the first place?

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I was a technical manager for a few high-volume financial dotcoms for 6 years. I managed as many 50 developers and a multi-million dollar budget, but I didn't write any code - no SQL, no java. However, I did make the technical decisions on system architecture. I'm not trying to toot my horn. Heck, for the past three years, I've been eeking out a living as a solo filemaker developer.

From the perspective of a filemaker developer hitting limits, Servoy is the best thing since sliced bread. I can't wait to play. From the viewpoint of a big system IT manager I have three big concerns with servoy:

1) Scaling/load balancing - tomcat is a great jsp/applet engine but it doesn't provide transactions and sharing oof them like a weblogic/jboss type EJB platform. There needs to be something out front handling session sharing and fail over too. Otherwise, high availability is impossible.

2) The SQL code generated by Servoy simply can't be as good as what a talented SQL developer would write. There are just too many tricks with indices, stored procedures, triggers, views etc.. Even the best automated tool must marginalize the SQL. To what extent this has on performance or availabilty, I do not know.

3) The thin client makes me nervious, but it is so attractive. Web Start is helpful in ensuring the right JDK, but I expect a lot of support problems with installation. Java's promise, "write once, run anywhere" just didn't happen.

Now to the fun. I'm setting up a little lab with servoy for a more indepth evaluation. I'll post my findings.

Bob Cart
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Postby bobcart » Fri Nov 21, 2003 10:13 pm

bcusick wrote:Hi Bob (cool name!) :D ,
The beauty of Servoy is that you can have as many database servers on as many machines running as many different database platforms as you want - and your SOLUTION can still access all of them (and join between them).


Sounds good, Bob. I think I'm getting the picture. Tell me if this is true. Since Servoy doesn't use a file system, the firebird that ships with servoy is just a repository for the Servoy code. There is no requirement for Servoy to use the same database for the actual business data being stored. So, then it would make perfect sense to have Servoy server loaded on a box with its firebird repository and perhaps have a seperate data server or servers running Postgres or (whatever flavor you prefer) to handle the business data for the solution.

Now I think I get the picture and see where the seperation is.

Thank you.

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Postby bcusick » Sat Nov 22, 2003 1:48 am

Hi Bob,

It gets even BETTER than that! The Firebird database that Servoy ships with - is just so people don't have to have their own SQL database to get started using Servoy. The fact of the matter is - your Servoy Repository database - can be in ANY database you choose - Oracle, SQL Server, Postgres (we have one with Postgres running in Holland for some of our internal stuff), etc.

:D

You gotta' love it!

Cheers,

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Postby bobcart » Sat Nov 22, 2003 6:24 pm

bcusick wrote:It gets even BETTER than that! The Firebird database that Servoy ships with - is just so people don't have to have their own SQL database to get started using Servoy. The fact of the matter is - your Servoy Repository database - can be in ANY database you choose - Oracle, SQL Server, Postgres (we have one with Postgres running in Holland for some of our internal stuff), etc.


Yes, you can, but why would you want to use a different database for the repository than the bundled firebird? Why not stick with firebird for the repository - it installs easily, it is well behaved with servoy, and it appears to be simple to administer. What am I missing? If your main data is on Oracle, it isn't obvious to me that you should use Oracle as your Servoy repository. What are the advantages and disadvantages of consolidating the business data and the servoy repository data all under a single database server versus keeping them seperate?

In favor of consolidation is perhaps less complexity from an administrative perspective. In favor of spliting is more flexibility, and maybe better performance. Thoughts anyone?
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Postby Jan Aleman » Sat Nov 22, 2003 6:37 pm

bob wrote:1) Scaling/load balancing - tomcat is a great jsp/applet engine but it doesn't provide transactions and sharing oof them like a weblogic/jboss type EJB platform. There needs to be something out front handling session sharing and fail over too. Otherwise, high availability is impossible.

Note that we currently only use Tomcat for the deployment of the client launcher file and server administration.

Our architecture is ready for load balancing and failover, and we have planned support for this next year in the production version of Servoy.
bob wrote:2) The SQL code generated by Servoy simply can't be as good as what a talented SQL developer would write. There are just too many tricks with indices, stored procedures, triggers, views etc.. Even the best automated tool must marginalize the SQL. To what extent this has on performance or availabilty, I do not know.

In most cases it does not have impact, it can have impact on reports in which case you can choose to write your own queries.
bob wrote:3) The thin client makes me nervious, but it is so attractive. Web Start is helpful in ensuring the right JDK, but I expect a lot of support problems with installation. Java's promise, "write once, run anywhere" just didn't happen.

At installation time the only requirement you'll need to have is a proper working Java Web Start environment. A lot less requirements than many other applications have. Additionally IBM, HP and Dell have all entered in a agreement with Sun where the pre-install Java 1.4.x and webstart on all their new machines. Apple already does this today. The other vendors will surely follow.
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Postby mattman » Mon Nov 24, 2003 8:55 am

This is a good thread for people wanting to understand the whole Servoy model. From the small beginnings today to what should be a great revolution. The whole Servoy concept is what a lot of software should be.

But evolution does take time. :)
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