Forums

At the moment we're doing, let's call it a proof of concept, project that is essentially a GUI .NET app accessing Jade, similar functionality to an existing JAde gui app in our system... locally (i.e. everything on one machine) I have got my head around it OK, I am not quite at the point yet of testing it over say a VPN connection to a remote server...

My question is (I'm kind of piecing together what I glean from documentation, various posts on this forum some of which are now quite outdated), is there currently any mechanism for some kind of "thin client" connection, or am I correct that as things stand, what is essentially a "fat client" connection is the only option? Other than something like a web service tier.

Note, I am not worried about any JAde GUI, simply implementing exposed classes/methods etc in a .NET forms app (as a kind of server app I've got it running fine with perfomance roughly similar to the Jade equivalent). How have others found tackling this, any pitfalls, is fat client even realistic for winform client apps, any help/suggestions greatly appreciated.

Regards
David

The thin client protocol to a JADE Application Server is specific to the JADE Thin Client; it cannot be used by other programs.

You're correct that if you sign on to the JADE Object Manager from an external program using any of the language APIs (C/C++, .NET/Java Class Library Exposure) then you are instantiating a fat client; either a single user node or a fat client connecting to the Database Server. Whether or not this is appropriate depends on how you're going to deploy your application. If everything's running on the same machine or the connection to the Database Server is over a fast network then it might be ok. But if it's a slow(er) link to the Database Server then you might run into performance problems. Generally speaking, if you wouldn't deploy a JADE Standard (aka Fat) Client in the manner that you're thinking about, then a fat client written in another language probably shouldn't be deployed in that manner either.

If you want your WinForm application to act as a thin client then you'll need to use an appropriate remoting technology (e.g. web services) to have your WinForm client program invoke operations on the server-side. Your server-side program will invoke operations in JADE via a fat client connection and will act as an application server for your WinForm client application.

Hope this helps.

Dean.

@CooperDino