JAVA and Databasing. Possible job opportunity.....
David McKalip, M.D.
mistakes.
I am asking a question on behalf of a medical specialty organization that
is attempting to provide database access ( preferrably Sybase) over the
WWW (Netscape Commerce Server on a DEC alpha 400) to provide a very
important service to its 4000 members.
Specifically, they want a forms based web application that will enable
the user to choose from menu and then prompt them with further menus and
work them through a decision tree with hundreds of branch points. The
output would be a list of codes for surgical operations that the surgeon
would then use to assist him in billing. The system needs to allow
encryption and authenticattion using Netscapes security layers and RSA
technology.
It seems to me that JAVA may have advantages and disadvantages for this.
Disadvantages:
1. Will Java enable a secure environment?
2. If one of the purposes of JAVA is to decrease the number of server
contacts, is a database really the best use of JAVA, because it HAS to
contact the server with the database repeatedly.
3. Are there enough JAVA programmers out there now to allow this project
to be done at the same price as if it were done in C, C++ or PERL?
Advantages:
1. JAVA is a great language and will be a major presence for a while, and
it is likely more processor friendly than C or C++.
2. There appears to be an excellent server ready to use for a project
like this: <A href ="http://weblogic.com/weblogic/dbkonat3.html">
dbKona/T3</A>.
3. JAVA is cool. But more importantly it (and JAVAscript) are becoming
widely liscenced. Icluding to database systems like Oracle and Sybase.
4. If done properly, it seems that such a database/front end could be
used for any system. For instance to collect data over the web.
The group I work with need a product by the Spring of 1996 and wants to
spend about $70,000 on this and on a similar database that would archive
abstracts from a subset of medline with about 200 journal titles dating
back for the last 5 years..
So. Any comments?
David McKalip, M.D.
University of North Carolina
david_...@unc.edu
Greg Noel
<david_...@unc.edu> wrote:
>Specifically, they want a forms based web application that will enable
>the user to choose from menu and then prompt them with further menus and
>work them through a decision tree with hundreds of branch points.
>Netscapes [sic - "Netscape's"] security layers and RSA technology.
I am doing something similar to this as a demo for my company. It's not
depending upon any intrinsic browser implementation, as it's unlikely that
the necessary functionality will be exposed to Java in the immediate future.
What I'm actually implementing is a "secure login" protocol using ideas
from SSH, SSL, and S/KEY. The result is a mutually-authenticated secure
connection between client and server.
I plan to post what I implement; hopefully, I'll have the demo ready in a
week or two.
With that prologue, let me tackle your advantages/disadvantages.
>Disadvantages:
>1. Will Java enable a secure environment?
I think so. There are some troubling issues to be resolved, but a lot of
bright people are looking at them and they should be worked out.
>2. If one of the purposes of JAVA is to decrease the number of server
>contacts, is a database really the best use of JAVA, because it HAS to
>contact the server with the database repeatedly. [sic - should be "?"]
Uh, I don't see this as one of the purposes of Java, per se, any more than
it being one of the purposes of, say, C++, Tcl, or Perl.
That being said, it's likely that Java can be used to reduce the number
of server interactions needed, as could any other general-purpose language.
>3. Are there enough JAVA programmers out there now to allow this project
>to be done at the same price as if it were done in C, C++ or PERL?
Probably not. The killer is the lack of a GUI builder, though, not the
lack of good programmers. Building the user interface is currently not
a trivial task.
I would imagine that this niche will be filled eventually, but probably
not in time to deliver a system in Spring of 1996. (If somebody can
show me wrong by pointing to an applet GUI builder I can use _today_,
I'd be ecstatic.)
>Advantages:
>1. JAVA is a great language and will be a major presence for a while, and
>it is likely more processor friendly than C or C++.
Well, it should be able to move some of the computation to the client,
which should decrease the demands on the server, but until on-the-fly
translators become ubiquitous, Java will be an interpreted language,
and therefore somewhat slower than languages compiled to native code.
>2. There appears to be an excellent server ready to use for a project
>like this: <A href ="http://weblogic.com/weblogic/dbkonat3.html">
>dbKona/T3</A>.
Yup; I'm talking to them, and they have some stuff that should be useful.
It's not directly applicable as it stands now but if we can work out a
way to bolt their server technology onto a secure transport, it should be
possible to use it.
>4. If done properly, it seems that such a database/front end could be
>used for any system. For instance to collect data over the web.
I'd like to think so; that's why I'm doing this.
Hope this helps,
--
-- Greg Noel, UNIX Guru gr...@qualcomm.com or gr...@noel.cts.com