Multi-tier enterprise architecture

[Chris Dodunski <Ch...@clear.net.nz>]

Hi,

Tell me, would an enterprise architecture comprising 1x web server
(running Tomcat), 1x application server (running Geronimo), and 1x
EIS/database server (running say HypersonicSQL) represent a typical
enterprise solution?

If not, what would be more typical for a medium/large scale system?

This is a hypothetical scenario, of course, as Geronimo isn't yet in
wide-spread usage.

Chris.

Re: Multi-tier enterprise architecture

[David Jencks <da...@yahoo.com>]

On Jun 14, 2005, at 12:28 AM, Chris Dodunski wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Tell me, would an enterprise architecture comprising 1x web server
> (running Tomcat), 1x application server (running Geronimo), and 1x
> EIS/database server (running say HypersonicSQL) represent a typical
> enterprise solution?

well, anything running hsql is not an enterprise solution.

There are tradeoffs when deciding how many tiers to put your app on.  
If you put the web app in the same vm as the ejbs, you will eliminate 
the latency and overhead of communication between machines between 
those app components, but obviously you will have more stuff running on 
one machine.  You can compensate by getting a larger machine or by some 
form of clustering or load balancing.

There are theoretically similar issues between the ejbs and the 
database.  However, the database is apt to spend a lot of time in each 
request waiting for the disk to turn and this can make the 
communication time between the app server and the database harder to 
notice.  Also, to really eliminate the communication overhead you would 
have to have the database running in the same VM as the app server, 
thus be written in java or java + JNI.  There are some products that do 
this (derby, pointbase at least) but most enterprise dbs (db2, oracle, 
sybase etc) don't.

thanks
david jencks
>
> If not, what would be more typical for a medium/large scale system?
>
> This is a hypothetical scenario, of course, as Geronimo isn't yet in
> wide-spread usage.
>
> Chris.
>