Application Delivery mechanisms in the age of bandwidth crunch

I'm not sure I really follow your question, fahim. I mean I understand more or less what you are asking, but what if everybody had access to the application at Gigabit speed, regardless of their location?  Assuming you had 1000 people acessing the server or server farm, you'd need massive amounts of bandwidth (both in link and CPU) to handle the load. I'm not sure if I had that kind of access need that I would centralize it anyway because I think that's where the single instance model breaks down. I'd be more inclined to locate a number of servers around the globe and distribute load based on link/bandwidth/CPU availability.

Good luck,
SteveJ

Sorry for not being quite concise in my earlier question.

The need is, to identify a methodology that would enable my software developers to do their bit (apart from the hardware infratsructure involved, bandwidth, optimisers, application load balancers etc)., so that they create agile and bandwidth friendly applications.

I am aware that the topic is huge but was wondering if there is something out there that I am unaware of from software development and it's assciated architecture perspective, for I read somewhere, that applications should also be developed in such a way that they perform appropriately over lesser bandwidths.

Maybe I am mistaken.

Rgds

fahim,

<< . . .developed in such a way that they perform appropriately over lesser bandwidths.>>

Yikes!!!! Most developers (I know this may be an unfair generalization) are building apps on gigbit neworks with gigantic, under utilized servers and have no clue or don't care how their apps behave under stressed or low-bandwidth conditions. I spent a month in Palo Alto working with Riverbed and SAP trying to optimize their WAN behavior.

Good luck,
SteveJ

SteveJ makes some good points here.

Most Programmers write code to do what needs to be done.

The very nature of that code may result in Poor networking performance:
Unclosed Recordsets
Poor Indexing
Un-optimized queries
Wide Search parameters
Complex Interface designs
Overuse of Graphics
Incorrect Datatypes
...ect

There is no magical new "Methodology" to make writing code more efficient or "Wire Friendly"

As you can see from the topics I listed above, what needs to be done is to enforce the "Existing" methodologies.
;-)

Jeff

Thanks SteveJ and boag.

Steve , it will be highly worth hearing about the outcomes of your month's stay in Palo alto. I am about to embark on the same journey but the only difference is that I would be dealing with Oracle's e Biz suite. I can take it offline this forum if you're willing to share. I am on linkedin at [ /in/fahimdxb ]

Boag: Does Oracle as the backened database for most of these applications, play any role by implementing 'out of the box' features in optimising it's indexing in the new(er) releases and makes it self better positioned to serve the 'cloud'?

fahim,

Oracle should have both a:
Rule Based Optimizer (RBO)
...and a...
Cost Based Optimizer (CBO)

I believe the CBO is the only one available in recent Oracle Products.
You can contact your Oracle vendor for info on these tools or do a Google search.

But again, this is a *Huge* topic.
Optimizing the back end is only one small part of this.
A poorly designed application interface can slow even the most efficient Back end databases to a crawl...

JeffCoachman

Jeff,

Not being a software developer but an infrastructure guy, when the problems hits, it all dumped on Network and bandwidth. I want to tell the managemnt that it's not always that the problem is solely a bandwidth issue. If i can get to do some reading and eventually understand the basics of a good application design tha would hold good when taken over the WAN, that would be it. That's what I came searching for here. I understand that it's huge but there has gotta be some paper, write up somewhere that would summarise it for management that doesn't have the will nor time to take it as a whole. I need to make a case of ' not all is network fault' to the management.

Thanks again!

Glad to be of assistance. May all your days get brighter and brighter.