• Steve Jones - SSC Editor (3/4/2013)


    <snip/>This makes me want to re-architect the way we build data driven application in the future, to prevent this type of vandalism. Maybe building an application level firewall that proxies all access to a database server. The idea of application servers was very popular a decade ago, but it seems few systems actually implemented this type of architecture. Perhaps this is because the web server/database server pairing is such an easy paradigm to build for most developers.<snip/>

    A lot of Enterprise developers, whose number I less than humbly count myself amongst, would love to properly architect and implement such systems. Often it is driven from above with the rapid and cheaper development options chosen. Sure, there are those developers who don't think like this and quite often they are the so called "web developers". Bearing in mind the dangers of generalisations, a lot of these developers come from a graphics/web design back ground or perhaps "the business" and don't see the value of software engineering. From a certain point of view, the economics of software engineering does not stack up...until things go wrong.

    Often the cost of application frameworks is high, not "out of the box" (which often cost enough in the first place) and there are very few people with expertise in these frameworks.

    As always we should be raising the level of abstraction of our frameworks to make leverage of them more cost effective. Unfortunately, we are still have yet to make logging, performance monitoring and such like work straight out of the box, perhaps straight out of each language, and built in through minor configuration only. Until we do this we will still be delivering a lower level of quality and have no hope for the level of maturity of applications suggested.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!