AMP platform for Flooring Co Application

[jlgdeveloper]

Your opinion please:

I have a prospective client who needs their end to end business application re-written on a modern platform.

My expertise is in web apps.

I would need to handle their client and vendor relationships, estimating, invoicing (pdf's), inventory (with some interaction to quickbooks), b2b data exchange, some accounts receivable, etc etc.

The old app is in Lotus approach. The new would be using Apache, My Sql, PHP. The question is.....should I be suggesting a web app to handle the job. I know everything can be done through AMP, but will it be fast enough, versatile enough etc to keep the client thrilled?

I believe they do 5 million or so a year, and have expansion ambitions, so might have multiple branches, or companies. About six people presently use their current app.

I would have a number of back end processes running independent of the web app handling business. What environments would you recommend for those? I am an expert at vb back-end apps and dll's, but want to keep this new app away from MS and cross-platform and love the AMP environment.

Should I be looking at a client front end, or would the AMP environment excel?

Thanks in advance.

Jonathan

Jonathan Galpin MCSD Õ¿Õ¬

http://www.iqzero.net

because software should be easy to use

 

[ingresman]

You would have to look at the size of the app in terms of available resourse.
E.g 5,000,000 per year is 97,000 per week, or 12,120 a day. What is each thing e.g. how many database trips does it do?.
I don't think you will have any issue handling that kind of load but you will have to carefuly consider how you scale your app i.e. single very large (expensive) server or many smaller (cheap) servers (I've written here before of such things). you may even have lots of large servers. This approsch is known as a web farm. Have a look on the Microsoft site they have some good stuff.
In short you need to do a capacity analysis of the problem.
When you have done this make sure that you split your app (or partition it) in to data services (e.g. mysql) on its own machine, business services (e.g. php) and client services (e.g. the browser).
If you design everything so it passes things around using XML you could change the browser to a VB or Java client app with out doing a massive rewrite.
Have a look at SOA on the web.
Hope this helps !

 

[jlgdeveloper]

Thanks for the comments ingresman.

My main issue with a web interface would be that for certain functions, a web page might end up being slow when it does a large number of tasks and data pulls. That is the only time a client could use the speed of a desktop client....but may not be worth the trouble since it is usually a tiny part of the entire business software needs.

In this case soa etc would not pay since most of this is in-house, and thus any client can connect directly to the data. XML, SOAP, SOA would merely be an additional layer best left out. SOA would be useful if outside interaction were the majority of needs.

The web app architecture is very scalable....


Jonathan Galpin MCSD Õ¿Õ¬

http://www.iqzero.net

because software should be easy to use

 

[ingresman]

SOA is a powerfull tecnique and is not just about b-2-b type interactions. Remember you may want to use functionality in 5 or 10 years time when we are all using the latest whiz-bank technology !!