🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi

We have a large Delphi (fully OOP) "fat" client server application
running off either Interbase or Oracle. We need to create thin-client
interfaces to the application, probably web-based. We'll start with the
"purchase ordering" module first and then expand to the others.

The problem that I see with all the other technologies is that it
appears that the thin-client talks to the database directly, whereas
with our system we cannot do that (due to the OOP methodology where you
have a TPurchusOrder object that knows how to do all its database stuff
internally. Our TPurchusOrder is exposed as a COM object and we could
also do it as CORBA if required.

Solutions that we're thinking of so far are around using a Java applet
as the thin-client (complex GUI stuff required with our app) talking to
a Java Servlet which in turns creates a COM instance of the
TPurchaseOrder object on the server using the COM technologies available
in Java (the object being served up by our current fat client exe
running on the server or even another server for scalabiliity).
Alternatively we can look at a CORBA orb on the server instead of
Servlets (although they seem to be very simple/powerful/fast) or even
look at using SilverStream/NetDynamics/etc to hook onto our app.

Any ideas out there about how to add this functionality to an existing
"fat" C/S app and provide scalability? We need to operate over low
bandwidth (say 33K if possible).

Thanks in advance
Xander van der Merwe
Soft Tech (NZ)