2007/12/12

Forté 4GL (UDS) basics - distribution

to make a application run on several different servers, Forté uses a specific object called Service Object.

basically a standard class (DummyMgr) is marked as distributed.
then a service object (by convention named DummyMgrSO) based on DummyMgr is defined in the Workshop. behind the scenes
Forté creates a proxy that exports all attributes and methods of DummyMgr thus making them remotely available to clients.

the application is partitioned, the first time Forté defines a default partitioning that can be amended, and installed in a given environment on a given server.

the application is registered with the environment manager, once started the
DummyMgrSO is registered with the name service so any client with a TCP/IP connectivity to the environment can get a reference to the DummyMgrSO and call methods or set/get values or variables on it. (accessing attributes may be arguable it is possible).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Forte Guru

we are running our Forte on 4GL 3.0 econsole version 3.0.N.2.
would you say that we could split up our application on multiple servers as well?

HankC / Sweden

fortever said...

Always a bit hard to answer questions ex nihilo,

If the current partitioning contains several partitions, yes it's always possible to split applications across different servers. Start a nodemanager on a different server and within eConsole load&install the partition on a the new machine.

If there is only one partition, a bit of work on the code has to be done to be able to slice the app. Bear in mind that some SO properties (visibility & dialogue duration) may not be compatible with a split app.