Re: Thin Client Alternatives -- Java / Oracle8i
MikeM wrote: Now I'm slightly confused. Are you saying in the latest wave of Internet Java applications, like Oracle's "i" initiatives, the processing of the applet is not done on the client? I couldn't figure this out from reading the Oracle information. That was my only guide….. I guessed the processing was done on the client. In other words, the entire Java app itself had to be sent down the pipe to the client. Then the client had to do the processing work and spit the results out via it's browser.
jkb wrote: You are correct. Essentially though - Java applets are somewhat server based computing as the application is distributed centrally from the Web server - and on-demand. Not entirely server based as the remote java client is required to have processing/memory power.
Andrew Fenic wrote: The complaints seem to come from people who are using Java as a replacement to Visual BASIC or Power Builder for fat client application development. Their points are valid. Java's AWT is a relatively weak class library and the Java IDE's are still fairly immature. Fat client applications written in Java tend to be unimpressive for those reasons.......Those arguments miss the point of Java, however. Larry Ellison is pushing network-centric computing where Java components reside primarily on the server and most user-side content is delivered as dynamically generated HTML. As a language for stored procedures and server side components, Java is great. The inefficiencies of the GUI libraries are not a factor and Just-In-Time (JIT) compilers can really show off their muscle.......It is absolutely the right time for Oracle to embrace Java on the server. Developers who use that technology today will not be disappointed with performance. Servlets, particularly, are an awesome replacement to CGI; much faster and more elegant. I believe most of the misconceptions regarding Java have come from its use on the client for GUI stuff.
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Hardly / jkb / Andrew,
Thought I would post some interesting comments from all of us concerning Java as a thin-client solution. I just recently learned more about it from browsing the Oracle thread. Between that thread and what I learned here I'm finally getting a grasp on Oracle's Thin-client push via Java.
This is pretty interesting. So Larry Ellison (LE) is pushing a thin-client model kind of/sort of similar to the Citrix screen refresh model. It now appears LE is planning on doing most of his processing on the server. As jkb mentioned (in our earlier discussions), he believes Citrix's Java product will have the server act as the Java client. And this appears to be kind of the same plan LE has for his 8i product.
The LE vision is that 8i will be sending to the client only updated HTML pages of the clients requests. So very little processing has to be done on the client. Interesting idea because this overcomes a lot of the complaints Java has gotten in the past as Andrew has pointed out above.
Now the primary difference (from a very basic analysis) between the two different thin-client solutions is Oracle's vision of the thin-client world means having to re-write, or write, apps specifically for Java. Whereas the Citrix view of the thin-client world means standard Windows apps don't have be re-written to deploy as thin-client.
If I have this whole Oracle Java thing somewhat correct, it's pretty clear that Microsoft sure would not want Oracle vision of the thin-client world to come true. Maybe if the 8i product takes off, we will see MSFT lining up behind the CTXS alternative (or at least the RDP alternative).
MikeM(From Florida)
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