Re: Future of IntraWeb with release of Delphi for .net

From: Binh Ly (bly_at_castle.net)
Date: 02/13/04 

Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 20:26:21 -0500

"Jason Southwell" <jason@southwell.net> wrote in message
news:402b0ae1@newsgroups.borland.com...
> source if you want to look at how they were done. If you don't know
> web technologies, it is significantly more difficult if not impossible.
> IW shields the web developer, not the component developer from web tech.

Ok fair enough. But without looking at it, I can't really judge. IMO,
ASP.NET custom control development is as cool as Delphi.

> Actually, server side state can be an effective and scalable method of
> state management. It reduces bandwidth requirements and state
> recreation time which can both be a limiting factor to scalability.

Ok, but you didn't answer my question. In the Guess demo, what is the
lifetime of the FormMain instance. Is it unknown/indefinite? Or for as long
as the user-session is alive? Or something else? The reason I'm asking is
because some things interest me when building web applications:

1) Can we scale-out to a webfarm (and not use sticky sessions)?

2) Are we using short-lived objects (and thus is .NET GC friendly - it is
not good to have objects get promoted to older GC generations needlessly)

I'm just curious here that's all.

> Even though IW shields you from 99% of the technical web knowledge, it
> is no replacement for solid programming techniques.

True. But I also want to know what is the implicit cost to me (i.e. things
that I cannot control) by using a framework - IMO, this is where ASP.NET
shines.

> As of right now, I don't think it is possible, though the Atozed guys
> are working on it. The problem is that ASP.NET controls are "dumb"
> controls and IW controls are "smart" controls. IW controls know much
> more about the session and state of the application.

Subjective. Saying something is dumb and some other thing is smart does not
help prove anything.

> You have some control over the response. You can send redirects and
> you can disconnect a session. You can also send files and streams.
> But the work is not done at the http level, rather IW has constructs to

Ok, then may I suggest that this area (going low-level any time) be also
improved. It could be helpful.

> The session id can be passed 3 different ways. Via the URL, via
> cookies, and via hidden fields. Back button and forwards are both
> handled though in all three tracking methods.

So I guess the Guess demo doesn't show this feature. :(

> does work fine. Sites have less state requirements and for sites you
> would use IW PageMode, with which you could bookmark any page you want
> in your site.

What is PageMode? Is there a demo I can see for PageMode?

Like I said, IW is a very good candidate for those with no prior web
development experience. It seems like a good product and good luck to you
guys. 

-- 
Binh Ly