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Turin
Jan 3rd, 2000, 12:06 AM
I'm not really looking forward to the mainenance either. I've fought the two-tiered vs. three-tiered battle with management on this project on 3 seperate occassions and lost every time. They have, what I call "Microsoft Fright". They don't trust any "new" technologies put out by Microsoft until it's been proven... <grr>

But, if there is no easy way around the VB Module limit, then they may not have a choice...hehe

Thanks

Clunietp
Jan 3rd, 2000, 12:14 AM
They won't even let you create a separate DLL that resides on the client machine? DAMN!

Do they want a Windows app or not?? They (and unfortunately, you too) will soon find out how costly it will be to find and fix bugs and update the application.......

If you have a team of developers, everybody must know everything about the app, instead of having different developers specialize on a certain logical tier. Database access methods is of no concern to the UI developer, the UI developer only cares that he is getting the objects he needs, he does not have to worry about HOW he is getting them....

My prayers are with you! (and I'm not even religious!)

:)

Turin
Jan 3rd, 2000, 11:20 AM
I am in the middle of a manufacturing system re-write going from a Clipper, X-Base system to a VB6, SQL7 system. The application is an MDI application with children forms that handle everything from Accounting, Customer Service and Order Entry to Shipping and MRP.

The approach that we are taking is a two teired, client server style with uncompiled class modules (instead of dll's).

We are about 1/3 of the way into the project and we are approaching VB's limit of 64K being entered into the Module-Entry table, which is about 400 modules(this includes .bas, .cls and .frm files) per project.

I'm sure that a project of this size isn't unusual. I need suggestion or recommendations on how to handle this situation, or examples on how you all have handled large scope projects.

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Clunietp
Jan 3rd, 2000, 11:35 AM
By NOT partitioning your app in logical tiers (user interface, object model, business & data access layers) you are only giving yourself a maintenence nightmare! And by writing a two tier app instead of a three tier, database access speed will be poor with 200-300+ concurrent database connections.

In order to upgrade your application, you will have to redistribute the EXE to every client, instead of replacing a DLL on a single application server (if the upgrade is to the business rules or database access layer).

I would certainly not want to maintain an app like that!

Good luck

Tom

jritchie
Jan 4th, 2000, 08:56 AM
Turin,

Ok bad luck on the three tiered.

How we would handle the project, is to split it into separate exes. One for accounting, one for manufacturing, purchasing, planning etc.

Then mix and match the exes to the individual users. You are going to have a nightmare maintaining this project. Still if it was easy any one could do it

KENNNY
Jan 4th, 2000, 06:20 PM
arghHH! nightmare!
and i thought my little 2000 line game was unmanageble :)

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cintel rules :p
www.cintelsoftware.co.uk

Crazy D
Jan 4th, 2000, 06:27 PM
I know how you feel... my boss didn't allow me at first to use a usercontrol!
But, I just implemented it, and told him when I was finished, and after a struggle (you must change it back or you loose your job, on which I replied, ok fire me...) I won and now I'm not even allowed to use usercontrols, I'm allowed to create a recordset class either (woohoo). Still not completely the way I want it, but since I'm looking for another job, I don't care...
Maybe they just need to see how it works, and how easy it works in the program, how maintaining the whole stuff that way is much easier... I'd say start to write some classes, find some collegues who agree with how you think, and when you have something that works pretty well, show it to your boss that those new scare technologies actually do work, and not really bad either, and that it's just the way to go...
Or, find another job :-) (hey, we need programmers... do you live in Holland? :-)

Turin
Jan 4th, 2000, 08:03 PM
Thanks for the offer but Holland is a little far for me.

That's kind of the approach that I've taken with this project. The majority of my code is in Class modules so it shouldn't be difficult to role over into dll's.