Hi Tim would that be one server per user or
one database per user ?

I went into doing this sometime ago and gave
up. Bandwidth is a pain, text based news forums
like yours dont eat it to much but catalogue type
sites with graphics soon eat it.
I would be interested if it was my own server with
full control like I get via my VPS provider but then
you would need to setup so many virtual servers
it would be a fulltime job in itself. 24-7 coverage
and such.
Rita

<<If anyone is interested I will keep you updated!>>
Definitely interested Adam, do keep us posted.

<< I will definitely be continuing to develop with Delphi given what I saw,
which isn't something I have been able to say with certainty for several
years now. Knowing I can carry on with Delphi is a huge relief, as the idea
of porting my whole code-base to Visual Studio / C# was horribly daunting.>>

Every encouraging to hear that. Just thinking about porting to Visual Studio
is giving me the shudders. I'm getting to old for this stuff. The only
porting I'll be doing is from Delphi 2007 to Delphi 2010 or later.

Regards
Gregory Sebastian

<<> Ditto but I'm stuck in a time warp of D2006.>>
Me to. Just release my latest versions my apps all done with D2007 .
Think I'll look at upgrading my version of Delphi and development laptop in
another 2 years or so.

Cheers
Gregory Sebastian

Bandwidth is a huge problem for me too Rita, its still quite expensive here
in Australia. Upstream bandwidth is even quite pathetic .  Good thing I
didn't put that many blob fields on my apps.

Regards
Gregory Sebastian

Adam,

<< NOTE TO TIM: The  Embarcadero guys said that Amazon were willing to set
up "clones" which software vendors like Elevate could specify ... i.e. You
define a machine (with DBISAM Server on it, operating system XXX, RAM of
YYY, the correct ports open etc.

Then users of DBISAM could come through you to an EC2 machine, without
really knowing it was an EC2 machine ... they would think of it as "Elevate
Hosted" ... and it could be designed to be the best possible DBISAM /
Elevate server. >>

Great info, thanks.  I'll have to look at the cost comparisons, etc.
Obviously, the EC2 route is enticing because of the scalability.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Rita,

<< Hi Tim would that be one server per user or one database per user ? >>

Well, I don't have any definite details yet, but I suspect that the
arrangements would depend upon the needs of the customer.  Some customers
would be fine sharing a server with other customers, for example.

<< I went into doing this sometime ago and gave up. Bandwidth is a pain,
text based news forums like yours dont eat it to much but catalogue type
sites with graphics soon eat it. >>

Well, you have to remember that EDB/DBISAM can compress all data traveling
across the connection, so you can get a very efficient connection, even with
large BLOBs.

<< I would be interested if it was my own server with full control like I
get via my VPS provider but then you would need to setup so many virtual
servers it would be a fulltime job in itself. 24-7 coverage and such. >>

Yeah, that is one of the issues, for sure.  That's why I'm trying to gauge
the interest level first.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

One of the most exciting prospects I can see is putting your whole network in the cloud, so that bandwidth "up" and "down" ceases to be an issue.

i.e. 1 server in the cloud linked  to a set of clients which are also cloud machines. Amazon makes this idea of a "cloud LAN" or "cloud VPN" relatively easy to set up.

The user fires up any normal PC (or Mac or whatever!) with zero install. Runs a remote connection program, and is launched into a desktop in the cloud which we have customized to display our application.

All connections from the cloud client to the cloud server are ultra fast ... I have done this already myself & it is dramatic! Noticeably faster than the normal connection time I have working with a _local_ file-server DBISAM db, let alone faster than a TCP-IP CS DBISAM set up, even on a fast LAN.

The cloud client then just serves down the graphic representation of the client-desktop to the user's local computer ... so long as the user has adequate bandwidth for that they get good service.

--

Costs & benefits:

- "micro instances" of the EC2 cloud are $0.02 per hour, less 750 free hours per year (?!!) ... which comes out at about $150 per active desktop per annum. If you can turn these on and off when they are used there is room to reduce this.

... users can then run your system from any machine capable of connecting to the cloud ... be it a Mac, Linux, XP or Windows 7 computer!

AND you, the developer get total control of the machine the client connects to!

Downsides: There is a bit of complication if users want to include local files in the operation of their applications ... the cloud-client application would have to have some systems built-in to upload files from the user machine.

--

I am a bit busy with "real" world at the moment ... but I hope I can make some more progress on it & keep you informed.

Adam


What about printing?

Roy Lambert

Roy Lambert wrote:

> Adam
>
>
> What about printing?
>
> Roy Lambert

Um .. paperless office .. at last?

--

Malcolm

>Um .. paperless office .. at last?

nah - they just put it into a book and put into their normal stock.

Roy Lambert [Team Elevate]