My experience on this one..
Last year I did a flight reservations system with similar requirements but using MSSQL for RDMS. For the server(business layer), i used Asta (www.astatech.com) so my client apps would connect to asta. Asta has most of the recordset functions handled. Coming from an African country where the internet is not so fast, speed was critical. The system in use by 150 offices with close to 1000 users! Worked well. However, I had timeout "SOMETIMES". My biggest fear was that I could not see the future of Asta. I just wasn't guaranteed about it. The system by this time had over 300,000 passenger records with 2 airlines using it. I decided to migrate the system to a mysql. I used crlab tools for Delphi/mysql connectivity! Performance is wonderful! Am happy with this. Mysql/crlab combination is a thin client (unlike using ADO to MSSQL). I discovered that I did not have to worry about the connectivity since is already taken care of. The only thing you need to worry about is that the app will be connecting to the database directly.but if this is your own organization (or branches of the same), I don't see this being an issue. I have used Indy for something else and has worked quite well too.am just thinking you will do more programming for that to customize it to move data in the shape you want. Hope this helps abit. Bernard From: Paul Bennett [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 11:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [delphi-en] SOAP or Sockets??? Just a little advice please fella's. We want to move our shop floor manufacturing processes from paper to an n-tier IT solution, where each work centre 'sends' a request to the application server for the data required to complete its process (probably an XML document), and sends back status data at some later stage. All fairly standard Client/Server stuff I except. There will be around 100 work centres talking to the application server (which in turn will be talking to a MySQL database). My question is, what is the best method of connecting to the application server to ensure minimum delay between initiating the data request at the work centre and receiving the data back from the application server?? I had considered SOAP, but know very little about it, or should I just stick to Indy Sockets?? Any advice gratefully received. Paul Bennett. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
