Re: [PLUG] web apps (more general)

["Chris Mann" <CMann@lmres.com>]

We're starting to get into web apps here. Personally, I'm a big fan of
them. If it's in a browser, it means easier updating (no more having to
touch dekstops to update a client) and it's less for the user to fubar.

Around here, since we've no internal devlopment team, or I am the
internal development team, I try to find packages that will do the job,
but allow for easy customization.

Example: We've just purchased a TrackIT for our help desk application.
Upside: It's down in CSS, and easy to customize for our needs. Down
Side: Runs ASP on IIS with M$ SQL. Total customization time put in thus
far: 5 hours. Basically, I Removed some of the Vendor Branding and
Replaced it with our own, and dinked around with the CSS sheets.

Example: We need an intranet. Instead of hand coding one, hiring an
outside company or purchasing a package, I went with Postnuke. Upside:
PHP, mysql, on a RH Server running apache, and it's open source.
Downside: Limited tech support. Customization time thus far: 16 hours. 

Long and short of it:

Between being the email nazi, DBA, Project Tech Lead, Backup Network
Manager and all the other hats, besides web dev, I don't have a lot of
time to spend starting from scratch. I try to find packages that are
customizable and scalable. 

Hope this helps.




Chris Mann
Systems Administrator
Legg Mason Real Estate Services
cmann@lmres.com
215.496.3035


>>> jeff@purple.com 05/10/02 06:08PM >>>
The recent discussion on web apps has me curious how other folks write
them.

Everywhere big I've worked where we've done significant web
development we've used something big and expensive--cold fusion, web
objetcs, etc., whatever the CTO thought was cool when we
started. Small places we've rolled our own using whatever the
individual developers liked, usually perl or java.

Although my preference has been for perl with DBI.pm and CGI.pm, I
always feel there must be a higher level abstraction available
somewhere. I'm not sure what it is, else I would have written it by
now.

I'm curious what thoughts/experience other folks have for writing
non-trivial web apps, how to get results quickly, etc.

-- 
 Jeff

 Jeff Abrahamson  <http://www.purple.com/jeff/>

 The Big Book of Misunderstanding, now in bookstores and on the web:
 <http://www.misunderstanding.net/buystuff.html>

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