[Info-vax] When the flag drops the bullshit stops!

[Richard Maher]

Hi Jeffrey,

"Jeffrey H. Coffield" <jeffrey at digitalsynergyinc.com> wrote in message
news:hef6nv$jh1$1 at news.eternal-september.org...
>
>
> Richard Maher wrote:
>
> > For our upcoming Tier3Client Example I have a web-page with a "Selection
> > Criteria" DIV on the left and an "Employee Details" DIV on the right.
Once
> > an individual Employee is located, my COBOL wants to use a $fao control
> > string containing a plethora of HTML tags and FAO lexicals directives
> > "<table><tr><td>Name:</td><td>!AS</td></tr></table>  and so on. . .".
The
> > result is then injected into the destination div with
"detailsDiv.innerHTML
> > = myBloodyBigString;".
> >
>
> This is where I would use an Ajax call (from JQuery) to get the XML data
> and let the client side build the table. This appears to be a case of
> having the server need to know so much about the html. Take a look at
> www.keepmeuptodate.net for examples of building HTML tables from XML data.
>
Don't know how much effort I should expend on rebutting someone who seems
incapable of stringing an Ajax call together without 120KB of bloatware but,
for the greater good, here goes. (And judging by the recent discussions in
comp.lang.javascript they're now desperate to bring in some sort of
lazy-loading in to reduce the footprint and load-overhead of yet more jQuery
bollocks.)

Tier3 is all about choices and user-impowerment. If they want to send binary
data down the line then thats fine with me; CSV data? No worries; XML
Tag-Soup? More power to ya! What my Employee Lookup "example" seeks to do is
showcase just some of the options available to the application developer.
[A]synchronous sends, generic auto-suggest functionality, cookieless SSO
across any number of concurrent tabs, and, yes, HTML tag injection.

Personally, I would use the technique sparingly and much prefer the
size-delimited binary throughput that only a full-blown (as opposed to
half-pregnant HTML5 web-sockets) TCP/IP Sockets can provide. Having said
that I certainly don't believe I am in a position to lecture to every system
designer without at least knowing some of their business requirements. The
innerHTML tag injection can be a very powerful tool in the box and the fact
that one programmer has chosen to paint themselves into an XML-only corner
is nether here nor there.

But let's talk apple 'n' apples. My example is an employee lookup on the Rdb
MF_PERSONNEL database. If your willing to host it I'm happy to put it up on
your site so people can compare it like for like with your lovely "I would
use an Ajax call (from JQuery) to get the XML data" example. What say you
Jeff? Probably early January before we're shipping the kit so that's gotta
be more than enough time for the killer combo of Jeff & jQuery.

BTW. I have a second little screen-saverish web-page on the drawing-board
that will just randomly pick an employee and put it up somewhere in a
floating div. This is purely to show the bytes/sent & rcvd counters ticking
over in the AWT console/dialog box while you've got another tab on top in
the browser. (You can skip that one)

Having said that, what are you recommending for single sign-on? What's the
current codepath from user-click to data retrieval? How many server
processes per users? How are you controlling server-affinity and ensuring
that the server processes has only those rights and privileges as the
requesting client?

Anyway I'm really, really looking forward to the performance comparisons and
metrics! How 'bout you? The KB transfer requirement will also be revealing
(and I've got an Applet!)

>
> Jeff Coffield

Regards Richard Maher

PS. Good luck with jQuery and IE8!