Multi-Tier Development Products
This list used to be known as the MIDAS Alternatives
Guide; the Borland MIDAS features have since been renamed DataSnap.
Multi-tier database development has become the dominant paradigm for
large-scale "enterprise" applications, and is reasonably popular
for smaller-scale applications as well. The following is a list of products
for doing multi-tier DB development in Delphi, including the tools in
the Delphi box. If you know of a relevant product that is not described
here, please tell me about it: feedback@kylecordes.com.
Multi-tier / 3-tier / thin client database development can be loosely
defined as some variation of this scenario:
- A client program (either an EXE or a web browser ) communicates with
an "applications server", which in turn communicates with
one or more database servers.
- The application server can be an off-the-shelf product, or custom
software. It could either pass the communications through essentially
unchanged (acting as a multiplexer and protocol translator), or it could
also apply "business rules". The application server might
be the primary executable (The J2EE model), or it might be compiled
in to a project you create.
- The communications could be in the form of SQL statements, or
some more abstract data representation. The client program does
not need to have drivers for the specific database server(s) being used,
since it communicates with the applications server, not the database
server(s) directly.
Now, the list:
- DataSnap: Inprise's Multi-tier
Distributed Application Services
- ASTA - "Wireless WebServices"
(also very useful for non-web, non-wireless applications). I've used
ASTA extensively.
- dbOvernet - "databases
over networks"
- ADO/RDS: Microsoft's
multi-tier / thin client technology. Most of the ADO components
listed in this site, as well as ADOExpress (in the Delphi box) support
Microsoft's RDS technology, though that technology seems to be going
by the wayside, as the .NET implementation of the same ideas is much
better.
- MIDware is a starting
point for multi-tier application development. It is freeware for noncommercial
use.
- VirtDS can use used
to put non-database data into a dataset, or to create your own BDE alternative.
The author has used it in conjunction with high-end transaction processing
middleware to create multi-tier database solutions. (It does not
have the ability to move datasets across a link; rather it presumes
that you will use some other middleware to do this.)
- Remote Data Access Library for Delphi
3 & 4
- RemObjects... much more information coming soon, I've been
using RemObjects for a project recently. (their web site is here)
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