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Let's stop adding new "technologies"

 
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Just recently thought about what it takes to write a simple website, with database access, a little bit of personalization and maybe some external data sources (like stock quotes or weather?). Here's the list of "technologies":
Java, JSP, JDBC, EJB, HTML, JavaScript, Servlets, XML, XSLT (maybe?), add WebSphere of WebLogic to this, maybe SOAP and it is more than 10!
With all brainpower on this site, I am suggesting a challenge: let's come up with a simpler way of buinding the freakin' thing! Let's create it, patent it, and take a chunk of Microsoft's and Sun's stake! Anyone?
Here's a thought. With Microsoft .NET, you need to know almost as many technologies, maybe less by 2 or 3. And THIS can be an advantage of .NET over Java
Shura
 
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It is simply indecent how all great minds think the same. I posted similar rant here: https://coderanch.com/t/36877/md/Acronymania-or-Why-Chinese-Superior
 
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Shura,
You're contributing to the problem. Why do you assume you would need EJBs?
I propose, based on your requirements as stated, that you don't. So get rid of Websphere and Wedlogic, and of course EJBs. But add Tomcat.
You could also nix XSLT, but then you might need to add SAX or some variant, so that's a draw.
You could do away with HTML and stick to JSP even if the content static, but then inside the JSPs you would have to have essentially HTML code, so the knowledge for it still applies. That's a draw.
XML is about right to draw in the external data as is JDBC for keeping it, but I think I could be persuaded to dump the Javascript. Realistically though, I sense you are right and Javascript will be present given some time. And while I am here, you might need to add CSS to the list unless you plan on litering your pages with styling info. Likewise Javascript is too narrow of a definition so you need to add the DOM to this.
At this point we substracted two and added two. No gain.
Then there is SOAP (you forgot WSDL and UDDI), and it ain't ready for primetime so lose it. But add SQL.
Still no gain. Or worse, if we add stored procedures and triggers.
And what the hell...let's throw in some PHP and Perl and Python and Struts and some XPath and god knows what else is out there.
And if you worked on this for a whole year you couldn't even claim a year of experience in any of these technologies since you're spreading yourself around so thinly. This assumes coding only and that you did no design work or use cases or config work.
So I agree with you. This is rediculous. But reality.
 
mister krabs
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And don't forget some Korn shell scripting to hang the batch stuff together which we trigger with cron. And don't forget JMS so we can pass requests to our vendors and our legacy systems that we access using CORBA.
 
Mapraputa Is
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Dilettantes... :roll: You all.
Look here:
XML-RPC, XQL, XML, XSL, XSLT, XPath, XLink, XPointer, XSP, JAXP, SAX, DOM, JDOM, JDBC, OLAP, RSS, EJB, J2EE, WSDL, UDDI, IIOP, CPP, JAXB, JAXM, JMS, JAXR, JCA...
I won.
--------------------
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is a great deal of difference."
[ May 22, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]
 
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Originally posted by Shura Balaganov:
Just recently thought about what it takes to write a simple website, with database access, a little bit of personalization and maybe some external data sources (like stock quotes or weather?). Here's the list of "technologies":
Java, JSP, JDBC, EJB, HTML, JavaScript, Servlets, XML, XSLT (maybe?), add WebSphere of WebLogic to this, maybe SOAP and it is more than 10!


Funny, I had been thinking of it the opposite way. Back in 1997 everyone was hiring web developers to build e-commerce sites. It seems like these days you can build an e-commerce site out of the box. Of course, these areas are specific, like commerce or portals, and not an arbitrary site. That doesn't mean the technology isn't in there on the backend, just that the tools hide it well enough so you can be a non-technical person and build such complex web sites.
--Mark
 
Mapraputa Is
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Well, seriously I remember old good times we could manage our data with one database product. SQL was enough for both querying and updating. Add a report generator and you are done. I refuse to believe that it's impossible to develop a single language for, say, web presentation.
Mark, wasn't Curl intended as such a language?
 
Shura Balaganov
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Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:

Funny, I had been thinking of it the opposite way. Back in 1997 everyone was hiring web developers to build e-commerce sites. It seems like these days you can build an e-commerce site out of the box. Of course, these areas are specific, like commerce or portals, and not an arbitrary site. That doesn't mean the technology isn't in there on the backend, just that the tools hide it well enough so you can be a non-technical person and build such complex web sites.


I have to see that non-technical person, who is going to create a site. Most of the "tools" I've seen out there are not delivering on promise to build anything worthy, unless all you want is 5-6 page "catalog and shopping basket" B2C "commerce" site. Anything beyond ordinary, and call for techies.
I see a valid reason to span many and many new so called "technologies". MONEY. As long as you can promise an increase in performance (or whatever else, ease of development, scalability, etc.) immediately a new language is formed, and "this is going to change the world" marketing propaganda is sent on its way. Then you push it to your existing clients, pedalling the fact that "now, finally, they can do things they wanted a lot better" :roll: What a pile of bull!
The problem #1 I see is that browser is a thin client. Curl (this is the first time I've been reading about it, so forgive me if I'm wrong) successfuly destroys that by supplying its own runtime environment. This is a bad idea, since corporations (as well as individuals) will be very reluctant to accept it. Most people just won't go beyond Macromedia plug-ins. I tend to believe that browser stays. Besides, we have no control over what Microsoft will do with it in the future (Mark, maybe you can pull a connection or two?)
So, I've seen another approach, the tool is called SilverStream. They create an environment where you have WYSIWYG HTML editor (hate those!), you generate something similar to JSP pages, can use Java, and it stores it all in Sybase database, so you database access is handled for you and is right there! The problem is these guys need lots of cash for R&D, because it is too complex to be in one environment anyway! Remember, E=mc^2?
How about we start from this and see if we can come up with Open Stadnard Enterprise Language (shortly OSEL, ask Map about what it stands for) ?
Shura
[ May 22, 2002: Message edited by: Shura Balaganov ]
 
Mark Herschberg
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Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Well, seriously I remember old good times we could manage our data with one database product. SQL was enough for both querying and updating. Add a report generator and you are done. I refuse to believe that it's impossible to develop a single language for, say, web presentation.
Mark, wasn't Curl intended as such a language?


Very true. Curl was, originally, one stop shopping, for HTML, Javascript, and Java/C++ all rolled into one Scheme-like package. From a technical standpoint, a good idea, but I didn't think it was a viable bussiness. 5 years later, they've changed what they do a couple times, but I still don't see it taking off (although I haven't looked at the latest iteration too deeply).
--Mark
 
Shura Balaganov
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OK, I am totally serious about this one. Because if we won't, we all be whining about how companies want 10 years of this technology and knowledge of 10 others...
1. I think Oracle is attempting to build something that might work, with its 9i. Buzzwords aside, if your Java code is INSIDE database, you successfully eliminated a few constraints. Add to that that a lot of the times people cluster web/app servers and not database server, and you got your very good attempt at unifying things. On second thought, I don't want to build apps inside Oracle for simple reason: Oracle has not perfected his front-end tools (no matter how they tried they still lost to TOAD! )
2. HTML: I have to poke it a little. Supposetly it is a language for presentation layer, but it is NOT a PROGRAMMING language. There's an obvious solution here to replace HTML-CSS-JavaScript (and hopefully, ugly XML-XSLT pair) with one tool.
The goal: language A for front-end, language B for back-end and data processing, SQL for database access. This way we won't have to push front-end users into learning back-end languages, unless they want to.
Shura
 
Thomas Paul
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If your Java code is inside the database you are screwed on scalability. I can't scale one small part without scaling the whole friggin' thing. Great for Oracle but sucks for the company that doesn't want to buy more Oracle licenses.
 
Shura Balaganov
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I am not saying its good what Oracle is doing. But if they succeed even in a marginal way to attract people to their side, I want to own their stock...
Shura
 
Shura Balaganov
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Ok, I think I have an idea how to "sell" a front-end language. It should use a plug-in, similar to Flash (and installed the same way), to run inside a browser. This way a language can be created that is not as much animation-driven as Flash, but rather combines HTML, JavaScript and CSS into one.
The problem with Flash is obviously its disconnect from business use, i.e. it's hard to create HTML or table-like looking structures. Cool animation doesn't sell very well when costs are calculated.
Shura
 
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Hi Shura,
I think you might find an answer to your tribulations at the following link:
.web page
These guys have succeded in consolidating quite a few technologies. Some serious companies seem to back them up too.
Best Regards
Rosen Dimitrov
 
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