Re: Opinions needed about the best "Middleware suite" kbmMW vs. RO\DA

From: Lauchlan M (LMackinnon_at_NOSPAMHotmail.com)
Date: 11/17/03 

Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 08:21:48 +1000

Hi Sol

> I hoped you would reply to my question, since I saw on both ng that
you
> recently had to make the same decisioin then me :),
>
> Its a little long an boring reply, but I hope you or someone else
could
> clarify those stuff, I would defenetly download all those trials, but I
have
> some question that I would like to know on before hand, so I don't have to
> spend hours just first figuring out how does framework works, and then see
> that they don't offer what I'm looking for.

I am also interested in how they both handle identities since I am using
Nexus which handles this in what seems to be a proprietary way, and I wonder
how this fits in with both RO/DA and with KbmMW.

Since you have detailed comments from Alessandro Frederici (RO/DA) and from
Kim Madsen (KbmMW) I won't get into the technical gist of your questions,
but I will say that both products would probably both do the job quite well
and it is probably a matter of programming tastes, budget and your
particular needs and evaluation results.

In a nutshell, I think RO/DA is particularly good for cross-database stuff
and for webservices (and some faster variations on web services) but KbmMW
can also do both cross-database and RPC, and has SOAP/web services in the
works. I find KbmMW's resolving of datasets from the client to the server to
be well thought out and excellent, and this is a key strength of KbmMW for
me. RO/DA may have / probably has something similar (I seem to recall so)
and I need to get stuck into my RO/DA evaluation again to learn about this.
KbmMW is cheaper, probably a third of the price, which may be a factor for
you.

Documentation is a work in progress for both products. Neither has a proper
help file AFAIK, or a pdf manual, but both have good articles on their
websites that will get you started and which are the best place to start
learning the products.

I think the advice about doing those three white papers I mentioned first
will save you time in KbmMW.

I think the RO part of RO/DA is _very_ well architected and a pleasure to
use, and you will sail through evaluating that part of RO/DA very quickly,
by working through the RO articles on the RO website. You will then want to
spend time getting your head around Data Abstract concepts such as schemas,
strongly typed datasets etc which would be the part you would be most
interested in.

And don't forget that both companies have great newsgroups you can ask
further questions on.

I hope this helps, and don't be shy to ask any further questions you may
have, either here or on the companies newsgroups.

Lauchlan M