On 31/01/2004 19:08 Richard Welty wrote:
[snip]
> but consider this: what if a company wants to migrate their desktops to
> Linux but can't get the required connectivity to MS-SQL? Should they
> meekly accept that they're locked into M$ for ever? Or should they
> investigate ways of replacing MS-SQL (maybe even with another
proprietry,
> but multi-platform, DB)? Which would you advise?
they need to look at the entirety of their application and consider what
it
is that they are doing that is causing the lock in, and then start taking
an iterative approach to breaking the lock.
It's nice to see that surrender is not an option for either :)
there's no one true path, it depends on the situation. usually
they've
coded a lot in C# or VB making it hard to migrate (but if they've done
that, they're SOL when it comes to non-MS desktops anyway.)
VB would be the main culprit around here. Google throws up a few porting
possibilities.
if it's non-standard SQL in an otherwise portable langauge, then
they probably need to look at whether they have properly
implemented an M-V-C architecture that hides the SQL from the
bulk of the app, so that the SQL is isolated and can be dealt
with w/o massive disruption. at that point, you look at what
non-standard features are in use, and figure out how to revise
the architecture to facilitate migration.
the main thing is that you may need to move the database first,
before you can move the desktop. this all presumes that there
is no answer involving JDBC or ODBC, which make desktop
migration fairly straightforward and independent of database
migration.
Agreed. My instinct is to migrate server/db first. It gives the users a
nice warm feeling when their server isn't regularly BSOD-ing or having to
be re-booted each time a piece of software is installed.
you can do a forklift, and switch everything all at once, but it
won't be seamless, it never is. people who want to do forklift
conversions need to understand the implications, but often
they're neck deep before they finally understand.
At which point the PHB comes in and announces "tea break over. Back on
your heads". You know, we're going to have to find something to disagree
over else this thread could get boring very quickly ;)
--
Paul Thomas
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