Opentalking the Database – Ch. 1: The Need

Version: 1.0

The Requirements

  1. Eliminate the need to install database specific components on end user PCs.
  2. Do not change application code however refactor where needed. The goal is to make changes to the access of the database transparent to the application.

The Solution

Employ Opentalk ST-ST to proxy database connections/sessions.

Background

The application which does what it does well uses the “direct SQL” methodology for interacting with currently an Oracle database. Note that this application was built well before I had arrived. If things were up to me we would be using Gemstone but that is another story. Hopefully, Glorp will take the edge off but first we want to make it easier to deploy and manage the application.

So simplistically the idea goes like this:

Fig. 1

The Solution entails:

  1. Configure communications
  2. Try to minimize excessive chatter between proxy and real db session i.e. employ a “caching proxy” I’ll explain what I mean later.
  3. Understand what objects are passed between the proxy and its target remote object in order to configure pass modes and decide what Classes may need to live in both spaces.
  4. Understand what to do about exceptions and db errors.
  5. Understand what to do about communications errors.
  6. Test in a VPN
  7. Try to stress test.
  8. among other things …

More to come but I am out of time for this chapter.