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[REBOL] Re: Need help for justification of using REBOL as dev language

From: brett:codeconscious at: 11-Apr-2001 10:42

As I see it you would need to show your architectural choices (probably not language specific), and why you choose this one. Then justify the various technological choices made to create this architecture. The Architecture architectural piece -> technological choice * Ultimate Storage -> Relational Database Surely no problems there. * GUI -> DHTML/Java/Javascript Given the combo, you must have already had some decent experience with this so I'm guessing this is not a problem for you to justify. * Page Generation / Local Dedicated Server -> Rebol/Custom Scripting You choose a local page generation scheme over a central server. Network issues, response times, etc. ASP would have been a nightmare on each PC... You could have written Java to do the page generation but you might have spent half your budgetted time on networking instead of writing the GUI.... * Test Scoring -> Rebol/Custom Scripting Anything probably would have done the job, but I'm guessing you would have a specific data model for the questions and answers. I'm guessing the model(s) would be quite simple in Rebol but would have taken a while in other languages. Certainly Rebol would have been easier to integrate with the Page Generation Choice. Possibly you lumped this in with the page generation because you needed fine control over the GUI output..... Etc. So what about Powerbuilder? Again depends on architecture. Three/n tier: complexity of machines and communications, administration not to mention lots of programming, a sophisticated layered model and expense. Two tier: Networking issues possibly, rigidity of the solution - cycle times with compiling / distribution. Java similar issues. Your solution probably can run without a central machine. If you needed to achieve that with Powerbuilder or Java, what would you haved used for your local data store? Do you have such a local store available. If not how long would it have taken you to build one or buy one and learn it? With these languages it comes down to already having a framework suitable to the task. If not, then you would need to build it. Which might have overrun your budget. The weak point of Rebol is the size of the developer population available to you (probably just you :) ). So you would need to hype up how fantastic Rebol was in the various uses you made of it in this project, why it succeeded so well, and how those qualities could be transferred to other projects. Rather than fighting for survival, consider how you could make a case for extra resources devoted to using Rebol to make it a new standard (perhaps for specific projects to keep everyone comfortable). You may have already given thought to how you could make this system better. For example does your local rebol script make a direct connection to the sqlserver - requiring Sql client on the test pc or do you emit something like an XML message containing the results that gets posted to a central collection point for import into the sql server? [I'm not saying which is better just generating ideas.] Hope it helps. Brett.