Jim,

>Hi Doug,
>
>>Jim,
>>
>>>>mark,
>>>>
>>>>>>... until the boss says, now let's put this on the web.
>>>>>
>>>>>Then you get WebConnect. :)
>>>>
>>>>Yes, and you then run head-first into issues of stateless design. For simple queries it's easy to build something, but get into multiple input/editing screens, with the validation needs they bring, and you see the wisdom of not having to rewrite all of that code again.
>>>
>>>David,
>>>
>>>Is there some connection between "stateless code" and n-tier that I am missing. I certainly have never equated n-tier with 'stateless' in any way, shape or form.
>>>Just trying to learn of yet more stuff I've likely missed.
>>>
>>>Cheers,
>>>
>>>JimN
>>
>>
>>They're really two different things.
>>
>>Statelessness deals with ensuring that your application runs in such a fashion that it is able to survive in a world where a connection between parts of your application are able to survive interruptions in those connections.
>>
>>If your application runs on a local area network and is able to survive random occurances of someone unplugging network wires and then plugging them back in without notice that your application could be considered stateless as it can survive. <g> And pick right back up where it left off. It seems to me to require the use of a lot of tokens that help manage the process.
>>
>>N-Tier, as I'm sure you already know is simply an issue of how you construct your application's internal relationship between data, logic and user interface in their relationship with each other.
>
>Thanks.
>
>I thought (there I go again) that David was suggesting that an initial n-tier design would make it a snap to move to the web. I guess he wasn't.
>
>Cheers,
>JimN

No, I'd think that the answer to that notion would be, "not necessarily".

You can have an n-tier application that would miserably fail on the net. I'm giving a little talk tonight at the Salt Lake User's Group about some of this. My point is going to be actually right along the lines of this discussion; that is, programming for the internet which by default requires statelessness doesn't necessarily require an n-tier design. Take that same application and put it on a LAN and a lot of the token passing that is needed to keep things in synch over the Internet are simply not needed.

In either case you can have a 2 or 3 or n-tier design. Kind of depends on how well you've thought out issues like remot EXE updating, data synchronization issues and change propigation.

They really are two different issues IMO.