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From: hall@cs.sfu.ca (Gary Hall)
Subject: Re: powerbuilder front-end to Visual-Works?
Message-ID: <1995Jan13.192520.12171@cs.sfu.ca>
Keywords: powerbuilder, smalltalk, three-tier
Organization: Faculty of Applied Science, Simon Fraser University
References: <your_login.4.0E7260EB@rmii.com> <3errpp$8gh@rainbow.rmii.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 1995 19:25:20 GMT
Lines: 33
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.soft-sys.powerbuilder:8355 comp.lang.smalltalk:19523

In article <3errpp$8gh@rainbow.rmii.com>, Andy Hofle <hof@rmii.com> wrote:
>In article <your_login.4.0E7260EB@rmii.com>,
>Put Your Name Here <your_login@rmii.com> wrote:
>-> My company is planning on moving to a three-tiered architecture 
>-> for some of its existing Powerbuilder applications.   We envision 
>-> having separate "peer-applications" for presentation, business 
>-> logic and database management.  Specifically, we are interested in using 
>-> Powerbuilder for the user interface, and connect it to a server-side
>-> application written in VisualWorks Smalltalk.
>-> 
>-> Has anyone used these tools in this manner before?  What issues
>-> did you have to overcome?  Would you recommend this as a viable
>-> architecture for large-scale systems?
>
>If you are planning on using PB for simple database operations/viewing, 
>then sure.  If you want PB to tie into your business logic, it's more 
>trouble than it's worth, assuming it can even be done.  Really, 
>Powerbuilder is nothing more than a database front-end.
>
>Andy
>

I've built a similar application.  The peer processes translate English into
SQL and do "data mining" (knowledge discovery in databases).  They are 
written in C, Common Lisp and Prolog, and run on Unix (SunSparc) machines.  
All processes (including the PB GUI) communicate with each other using sockets.  This protocol is available within Windows via the WINSOCK.DLL (provided by 
various vendors).  

-- 
Gary Hall                  | Voice (604) 291-3208 | INTERNET: hall@cs.sfu.ca
Centre for Systems Science | Fax   (604) 291-4424 | 
Simon Fraser University    | 			  
Burnaby, B.C.  V5A 1S6     |       
