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<html>
<head>
  <title>OpenACS 3-Tiers</title>
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<table width="100%">
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    <td align="left"><h2>OpenACS 3-Tiers</h2></td>
    <td align="right"><a href="slide-9.html">Prev</a> | <a href="slide-11.html">Next</a></td>
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<center>
  <img src="img/openacs-3-tiers.gif" />
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<blockquote>

Although I haven't worked on a corporate website in a year, and have
never really worked on the sales end of marketeering, it was the case
in the early 2000's that everyone was obsessed with three tier
architecture. <br /><br />

Three tier architecture is a joke.  Any software project can be
"transformed" into a 3-tier architecture.  Why is 3-tiers so magical?
Cause people like the number 3, I know that I do.  With many companies
sending woefully unequiped people out to buy software services they
latched onto whatever stupid concept was being pimped at the time.
For the same reason lots of people are addicted to Java, not that Java
is a bad programming language, it isn't, but it certainly isn't the
best solution to every problem, and there is probably more bad Java
programming out there then there is bad LISP or Python programming.<br/><br/>

If you ignore my tirade against the marketing hype of 3-tiers, you can
see quite clearly that OpenACS adopts a three-tiered architecture (of
course so does a ham sandwich if you view it from a certain angle --
there is the bread tier, the meat tier, and the mustard tier).

<ul>

   <li>Web Client: The web client is the user's browser.  While
         most (evil) web designers like to design their products to
         work with Internet Explorere's version of HTML, one should
         always assume nothing about the user's web client.  Maybe
         they are kicking it old school and using a text browser like
         <a href="http://www.w3.org/">W3</a>, an old relic like
         Netscape 3, or maybe they are an OSS enthusiast like myself
         and using
         <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</a>.  The general
         assumption in OpenACS is that the user may be using almost
         anything that adheres to the HTTP and HTML standards, which
         IE does not.</li>

   <li>Web Server (AOLserver): Although HTTP is a relatively simple protocol
         people want to be insulated from it as much as possible, just
         as they don't want to manually binding the the socket etc.
         It's responsibilities (at the highest level) are to talk to
         the Web Clients and provide the potential of communicating
         with the database.</li>

   <li>RDBMS: The Relational Database Management System is used for
         storage of data.  Don't let the picture fool you, OpenACS is
         designed primarly to work with PostGreSQL, not ORACLE.</li>

</ul>

<small>Image stolen from <a
href="http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/">Phil's book</a></small>

</blockquote>

<hr>
<a href="tristancohen@yahoo.com">tristancohen@yahoo.com</a>
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by admin — last modified 2003-04-28 10:14
 

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