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Supporting the application platform

As our discussion around the role of the application platform continues, a quick look back shows us that the Reg reader jury is still out when it comes to deciding on the capabilities which deserve or need to be included in one. The other side of the coin to ‘what’, is perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘how’. If you are going to develop …

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amanfromMars

Surely not?

Martin,

Do people offer Application Platforms which they cannot Maintain and Service/Strip Down and Rebuild themselves?

I find that situation quite bizarre for it is bound to create problems.

Jason Alcock
Linux

build it and they will support it

It may be naive, but I think that we see demand-and-then-supply cycle in the support of application platform components. A useful component that may start out a bit wild and woolly in training and support area, but this matures as long as the platform is in use.

Internet also allows for niche ecosystems to rumble on, apparently "Clipper is still alive".

Kevin Bailey

Best of breed

<quote>

do such longer-term considerations play a part in how you will proceed with the planning and development of an application platform?

</quote>

My 2 cents...

Long term support is obviously important - and proprietary does not necessarily guarantee it.

Look at how MS ASP changed to the (incompatible) ASP.NET - and now ASP.NET looks like it is 'forking' into ASP.NET MVC which is not 100% compatible with normal ASP.NET.

To me 'best of breed' tools are the best way forward.

I.e.

Linux (Debian) ,Apache, Postgresql, PHP, Zend Framework, MVC, REST, Smarty, Memcached, emacs/vim/whatever, Ubuntu laptops/PC's to develop on. Maybe Mozilla and XUL as well.

Request Tracker, Twiki, mailing lists, encrypted IRC, SQL-Ledger, screen etc for the collaboration and administration.

(Twiki in particular can be extremely useful when using authenticated access).

The important point is - 'best of breed' tools will be maintained for a long time becasue they are widely used. Lets face it Apache 1.3 would have been dropped ages ago if it was proprietary but because it is still massively used and liked and open source it is still actively maintained. This is great for servers we set up 6-7 years ago.

Also, as this is a modular approach the components can be changed as required. I.e. Solaris for Debian, Oracle for Postgresql.

So, proprietary tools will be maintained long term and can be swapped in and out as required without having to change the whole system.

jake

You're doing buzzwords again ...

Babble doesn't count.

Running code trumps all.

Either your people can do it, or they can't. If they can't, fire them and find someone who can.

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