Hi Jaime, Putting this model together was definitely a lot of work at first, but, once you have the major service and business components in place things really start to pick up speed. At this point it's an extremely straightforward process for us to tie new applications into our CRM, CMS, etc., because all that stuff was written a year ago or more. In addition, because the model is based on SOA principles, we can theoretically unplug the old CMS and plug in a new one without having to rearchitect HCPro's entire web universe -- just the CMS service component. We can also break out any one object, or even an entire layer, as a separate web service without too much headache if it needs dedicated resources -- CF makes that very easy. As far as porting the concept to Java...I've thought about it, but the CF solution works so well that we've been focusing mainly on rolling out new stuff built on top of it. There's a lot going on, but overall the architecture and concepts really aren' t all that complex when you look at it. There's a running theme of abstraction and encapsulation, as well as heavy use of front controller, facade, and adapter patterns. I've been trying to put together some information and code samples to provide to people -- just haven't had the time. But, my goal this year is to share what we've built with the CF community. I've been working on a name for the project, so stay tuned!
Matt Matthew Drayer Development Manager HCPro, Inc. Marblehead MA [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jaime Metcher Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 6:31 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [CFCDEV] How many objects is too many? Matt, That's fascinating stuff, and sounds like a lot of work. With my programmer hat on, I'd like to just get stuck into it. With my development manager hat on, I'd like to know where I can buy it (or download it - thanks again, Mark!) so my programmers can stay busy on our real value-adds . Did you consider going to J2EE (i.e. write your model in Java) so as to take advantage of the third party caching and persistence frameworks? Jaime Metcher -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Matthew Drayer Sent: Monday, 5 February 2007 4:42 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [CFCDEV] How many objects is too many? Hi there, Our enterprise app is comprised of two major tiers -- a business layer and a service layer. The SL entities represent our core systems, and the BL entities represent business concepts such as customers and items, and there's a controller for each layer. When objects are needed they are instantiated by the controller and cached into persistent memory (ie, lazy load). To keep RAM utilization to a minimum, we load data into the objects only as needed, too. Every get() method has a corresponding load() method which is in charge of requesting data from the service layer. So, the objects get "heavier" as they stick around, but it means less overhead in terms of instantiation. BL entities are destroyed by the BL controller upon completion of any add(), edit(), or remove() transaction. We also have a scheduled task which runs on the side -- it manages a TTL value for the entities based on a datetime value embedded in each entity upon instantiation as well as % available RAM on the server. The less RAM available, the shorter the TTL. This way no one slips through the cracks and we don't max out the memory. On average we have about 6000 object instances in RAM at any given time representing customers, items, categories, etc. If we didn't run a model like this we'd probably have a dozen machines in production in order to support all of our sites, instead of just one. I also recommend if you are thinking about exposing your model as a web service, that you create a lightweight "listener" CFC to function as a middle man between clients and the model. Give it one method called something like "processRequest" and have it collect/pass the actual method name and data container(s) to a persistent controller object for processing. Matt Matthew Drayer Development Manager HCPro, Inc. Marblehead MA [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nando Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2007 10:07 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [CFCDEV] How many objects is too many? Jaime, My line of thinking here is pretty simple, but i think it's in line with best practice in CF. If you simply need to display the data to the user (probably as a list), use cfquery, a ColdFusion query object. If your users need to work with the data, then go with business objects, DAO's, etc. The simple fact of the matter is that a user will not be able to edit 1000's of entities at the same time. I see the usefulness of an object most clearly when you need to both maintain state and manipulate the data, during an editing operation for instance. And i don't see the possibility of needing to instantiate hundreds of objects in one go unless you're working with data, specifically a list of records. As far as your service layer goes, well, you're probably going to instantiate that and cache it in application scope, using lazy loading wherever possible. Practically, if you've got 100's of objects in your service layer, i'm pretty sure they won't all be needed on the first page load. Another possible way of minimizing the overhead of object creation is to represent the data packets only as an array of structs if you're more comfortable with that rather than a query object, and populating a full blown business object as necessary from the array of structs. Translating that to the world of transfer, at it's current level, means to me that transfer isn't well suited to display lists, for instance. Better to use your own gateway for that and return a query object, possibly caching it with your own mechanism if needed. Or use the new "Transfer Query Language" feature Mark is working on instead of your own gateway. I'm sure your use cases are more complex than i've represented them here talking about lists and edit operations, but as far as i know, this is the general approach to use in CF for performance reasons. Jaime Metcher wrote: Hi, When you're modelling your application, how much attention do you pay to minimizing the number of objects instantiated? Obviously CF has a higher object creation overhead than some other languages. OTOH, the gist of much OO practice (and many patterns) is to create lots of fine grained objects. I often read that a typical noob error is creating too few objects with too many responsibilities. So, how often do you find yourself thinking "well, in Java or Smalltalk I'd do xyz, but in CF I'd better not because I'd end up with too many objects"? Which is another way of asking to what extent we need to modify existing OO practices to allow for CF's limitations. A couple of points of reference: 1. This post was prompted by a discussion with Mark Mandel on the transferdev list. I'd spotted an issue purely because of the massive slowdown that occurred when 700 objects were inadvertently created. That issue has been resolved, but it left me wondering, if I can't instantiate 700 objects how many can I create? 10? 50? This has huge implications for how we architect our apps. 2. I have a Dolphin Smalltalk image that, from a fresh install, reports instantiating 160,000 objects. Obviously with an object system this slick you don't worry much about throwing in a few hundred more. Given that CF's comfort zone is probably a couple of orders of magnitude lower, maybe a lot of the standard advice on OO design just doesn't apply to CF? Any thoughts appreciated. Jaime Metcher You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at http://www.cfczone.org/listserv.cfm CFCDev is supported by: Katapult Media, Inc. We are cool code geeks looking for fun projects to rock! www.katapultmedia.com An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] -- <http://aria-media.com/> Aria Media Sagl CP 234 6934 Bioggio Switzerland www.aria-media.com <http://aria-media.com/> You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at http://www.cfczone.org/listserv.cfm CFCDev is supported by: Katapult Media, Inc. We are cool code geeks looking for fun projects to rock! www.katapultmedia.com An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at http://www.cfczone.org/listserv.cfm CFCDev is supported by: Katapult Media, Inc. We are cool code geeks looking for fun projects to rock! www.katapultmedia.com An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at http://www.cfczone.org/listserv.cfm CFCDev is supported by: Katapult Media, Inc. We are cool code geeks looking for fun projects to rock! www.katapultmedia.com An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at http://www.cfczone.org/listserv.cfm CFCDev is supported by: Katapult Media, Inc. We are cool code geeks looking for fun projects to rock! www.katapultmedia.com An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
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