Practical Web Programming

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

ESRI or Manifold?

Looks like it's not only me who is having a dilemma of what web programming language to learn. Our sections is having difficulty also in choosing what web programming language to use in our software development. Should it be JSP or ASP.

Since our department's primary goal is to create mapping and GIS softwares, we searched for a software that we can use to leverage our mapping software development. After a long time of searching on the internet, ERSI products and Manifold was shortlisted. ERSI product was the first choice because it supports both Java and Microsoft technology, but the drawback is it is so expensive. So we resorted to Manifold.

All was well until we consulted our network department. They said, they are upgrading our company's enterprise server from Microsoft products to Linux because of security problem and high cost in Microsoft products (Windows servers). Our problem again started because Manifold supports only Microsoft's ASP or Active Server Pages and Microsoft products do not run on Linux operating system. Until we come up with a good solution to this problem, we still cannot make a conclusion of what web programming language to use.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In terms of Manifold, what you could do even with the enterprise servers (presumably with some kind of a database and a web server) running Linux is to have a Windows machine inside the DMZ which would host the mapping part of the web site. The main web site hosted on a Linux machine would contain one or more links (IMG, IFRAME, a simple A, whatever) to the Windows machine which would run Manifold IMS. Alternatively, you could easily let the main web site communicate with Manifold IMS using web services. Manifold would have no problem talking to a database (or multiple databases, if so desired) on Linux machines. Just a thought.

Joel Badinas said...

Anonymous,

Thanks for you thought. We'll explore this possible alternative.

Do you have an example of a website that runs on Linux and Manifold at the same time?

Anonymous said...

I do not know of a public web site that does this (I guess mostly because it is not clear whether or not a particular web site with Manifold IMS uses a Linux or Windows back-end), but I personally have been able to use Manifold with Oracle, MySQL and then PostgreSQL databases hosted on Linux machines. This was not particularly difficult.

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