Re: [Junk E-Mail - LOW] [flexcoders] Re: Choice of backend systems - which provides

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:32:04 -0700

Hey Hank,

Using FDS also means that you have root access to the web server right? Seeing as this is Java, you would need permissions to install in root folders.

So, even if you can use FDS Express, it is still restricted(not free in the sense of Flex SDK). Dedicated servers are not cheap.

Peace, Mike

On 8/24/06, hank williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Oh, Sorry Jack, I didnt understand that you were asking a licensing question.

Regards,
Hank

On 8/24/06, Jack Caldwell < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hank:
 
Not a problem.
 
I agree overall the web app has a bearing.
 
However, I just wanted to know how many concurrent users FDS Express
would allow.
 
Also, with the developmental version what happens when concurrent user
number 101 comes knocking on the door.
 
Thanks,
 
Jack

From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:flexcoders@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of hank williams
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 2:31 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Junk E-Mail - LOW] [flexcoders] Re: Choice of backend systems - which provides

Hate to jump in, because I see your question is targeted at ted, but I have to say one thing. The issue isnt how many users FDS Express can support but how many users your entire application can support per server. Because FDS is just a piece of your web application (WAR). So if you are doing something that is computationally intense or disk access intense it will suck up system resources more than otherwise, thus reducing the number of concurrent users your FDS app can support. So you really need to test your app to see how many concurrent users your apps, without FDS, will support. Adding FDS to that will obviously consume resources as well.

What this means is FDS is more expensive when attached to a more "heavy" application.

Regards,
Hank

On 8/24/06, Jack Caldwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ted:
 
How many concurrent users can FDS Express support?
 
On the departmental version, if the 101st concurrent user tries to connect is there an
error message or busy message or do they just wait a little longer to get the data?
 
Thanks,
 
Jack

From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Ted Patrick
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 1:57 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Junk E-Mail - LOW] [flexcoders] Re: Choice of backend systems - which provides

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

FDS Express == 1CPU FREE

- FDS Express is limited to one 1 physical CPU (multi-core supported)

- FDS Express cannot be clustered for failover and redundancy.

All higher level FDS Licenses address the redundancy and failover aspects for departmental use (100 concurrent users) and enterprise (unlimited users).

The blanket statement that FDS costs $20,000 is dead wrong. For a large majority of projects it is free, free, free.

Ted Patrick

Flex Evangelist

Adobe Systems Incorporated

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]ups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ups.com] On Behalf Of hank williams


Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 11:19 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]ups.com
Subject: Re: [Junk E-Mail - LOW] [flexcoders] Re: Choice of backend systems - which provides

I have to agree with Ted regarding productivity.

Of course I may just be revealing that I am not as smart as the rest of you, but when I was considering various means of connecting to my java server during the transition to Flex2, I explored Axis and Axis2 for web services.

Figuring out how to use them was *no joke*. I am sure if I had dedicated the time to it I could have gotten up and running. But, honestly, I gave up after several days of study.

The Axis umailing list was fairly useless for beginners, there were lots of people having problems with Axis2 and the documentation was almost unbearable. Now if you are already an expert then none of this applies to you. But the idea that from flash that you can just call your server side code just by declaring the classes you are working with in a configuration file is magic. It is so easy. Of course the typing issues on web services sound like a bear too and there are none with remoting, but I cant really talk about that because I never got that far with web services.

FDS and Flex2 are far far easier to work with. My only problem with FDS is pricing. Remoting used to cost $1000 or so per server, or it was free if you used an open source solution. Now it costs $20,000 per server after you need more than one server. I may actually have to switch back to an AMF0 version of remoting by the time my first server is overwhelmed because $20k is insane. I am using amazon S3 and for 20k worth of bandwidth and storage I could support millions of users over a year. but 20k in FDS software probably only supports 100k users. So the economics of FDS are insane. They are probably driven by the desire not to screw the Flex 1.5 people who paid a lot of money for their servers. Nevertheless, for remoting only apps FDS pricing is the only reason not to use it. But technically if you dont have to learn web services FDS will save you a lot of time.

Regards,
Hank

On 8/23/06, Ted Patrick < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

AMF is faster in 3 fundamental ways:

  1. Bandwidth Size – Smaller, lighter, faster!!!

  1. Parsing Speed – Less work on both client and server!!!

  1. Developer Productivity – Less work for developers!!!

Web Services are dependent on XML Parsing on both the client and server side. Although it's a good story, XML parsers are not very efficient as parsing documents is an interpreted process. The Flash Player XML parser will always be dramatically slower than AMF parsing, binary formats are notoriously faster in this regard.

XML parsing additionally decays rapidly as the file size increases. Flash Player XML parsing time increase non-linearly with larger XML documents. With AMF parsing times are linear with data size. The XML decay can be attributed to the number of inner objects that need to be created during a parsing run. AMF objects are 1:1 with the data received where XML data is 1:N per Elements/Attribute.

Comparing XML to AMF is an unfair race, AMF wins every time. When you add in the overhead of WS SOAP parsing atop the base XML parser speed you begin to see performance issues. With SOAP, you interpret an XML document back into typed objects depending on the SOAP specifics used. Sure 350ms is ok once or twice, but try doing 200 transactions in this format and you will see performance issues arise. Using Web Services you are forcing the Flash Player to do allot of unneeded work. The goal is to build richer applications, not burn up player performance in crud operations.

Additionally non-proxied Web Service use suffers with Flash Player because of the browser variation in the plug-in APIS. You cannot get the 500 Errors response content in IE and thus the SOAP fault standard breaks down. In SOAP there are important messages that arrive with 500 Errors and the inability of the Flash Player to receive these is a problem. Unfortunately there is no seamless way to get 500 Errors into the Flash Player other then rewriting an HTTP Client in the Socket class. This effort would also require a new SOAP library within Flex and socket use on low ports requires a more complex crossdomain.xml configuration. Even then you still suffer the same performance issues.

Performance aside, the productivity discussion is much more important. AMF3 and Flex Data Services are wildly productive. Once you compile your Java Class and configure a destination in FDS (1 XML Element), you are done. All typing is handled, All methods are ready to run with any number of client applications. It is the easiest way to create a server side API that I know of. Actually most cases, implementing FDS will removes $20,000 of developer time wasted on implementing other data exchange for an application. FDS value is easy to see when viewed through this productivity ROI metric. If you add CF integration into FDS, you enjoy an even more productive jump. We spend so much time talking about performance but we often waste so much developer time doing mundane data exchange when things could be automated.

Having worked at Cynergy Systems, everyone needs to realize that Carson, Dave and Team are industry leading professionals at Web Services. They know SOAP better than any single consulting firm that I know of. These guys were on teams at Sybase and Microsoft building the first generation of Web Services integration servers (MS BizTalk, EAServer)!!! They have the expertise to make Web Services/JAVA work seamlessly with Flex but this is out of reach for most (unless you hire them). They can jump through flaming hoops that few developers can with the FLEX / TOMCAT / AXIS / JAVA stack. They have been down a very hard road and have learning all the tricks to making this stack work very well for their clients. Looking back and knowing what I know now about Flex Data Services much of this hard work could have been dramatically simplified and automated (but then again Flex 2/FDS hadn't shipped yet…). FDS makes all this hard work evaporate and makes easy for anyone to exchange data like an industry leading professional.

The really funny part is that we are only talking about the RPC portions of Flex Data Services. Messaging and Data Management are really valuable features to understand and explore. These two features are 70% of the FDS product. We(Adobe) need to do a better job of making this value crystal clear.

Flex Data Services is the most productive and high performance way to exchange data with the Flash Player. Period, Hands Down, Next!

My 2 cents,

Ted Patrick

Flex Evangelist

Adobe Systems Incorporated






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