Combination Strategy of C/S mode and B/S mode in MIS Development

Original URL: http://www.ahetc.gov.cn/cit/199910/03.htm

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I. Introduction

Since the commercialization of the Internet, the name Intranet has become a fashionable word, and gradually distinguishes people from the concept of MIS. If the general understanding is: "The Internet after the firewall", it does have a lot of similarities with the primary MIS (Enterprise Management Information System), but I believe that the Intranet cannot be compared with the MIS, based on at least two points:

1. Intranet is based on Internet technology. To meet the application requirements of enterprises, an enhanced application technology platform has been developed. It focuses on platform technologies.

2. MIS components include computer applicationsProgram, OS, communication protocols, etc. It is a comprehensive system and focuses more on online content and online management. It can be said that the emergence of Intranet only enriches the attractiveness of MIS, and cannot replace the scope of MIS.

There are two misunderstandings in the construction of enterprise information networks based on conceptual obfuscation:

1. equivalent to mis. Mis refers to the C/S (Client/Server) mode, and Intranet represents the new B/S (Browser/Server) mode. All previous system design solutions can be solved in B/S mode, and all systems are developed in B/S mode.

2. the Comparison Between Intranet and MIS indicates that B/S focuses on the publishing of information texts, and the formation process of C/S database information is also the publishing process, it is suggested that the database information is still in the C/S mode.

The author believes that the above two methods are both extreme and lack of understanding of the new Intranet platform. It is necessary to give a full understanding of them before they can be taken correctly.

II. Application and defects of C/S

MIS has been developing in China for more than 20 years, but it has been widely applied for nearly a decade. Due to the huge and complex data information management of enterprises, it has played a huge role in the production and operation management of enterprises. c/s itself is a relatively advanced structure developed into 1990s. In this mode, applications are divided into two parts. The server is responsible for data management and the client completes interaction tasks with users. C/S has strong data manipulation and transaction processing capabilities, as well as data security and integrity constraints. However, with the increasing scale of enterprises, the complexity of applications is constantly increasing, and the following points are gradually exposed:

1. high development costs. The C/S structure has high requirements on the client's hardware and software, especially the continuous upgrade of the software. The requirement on the hardware is constantly improved, increasing the cost of the entire system and increasing the bloated client.

2. Porting is difficult. Applications developed by different development tools are generally incompatible and cannot be moved to other platforms for running.

3. the user interface has different styles and is complicated to use, which is not conducive to promotion.

4. Complicated maintenance and difficult upgrading. If the application is to be upgraded, the client must be upgraded one by one at the site, and the applications on each client must be maintained.

5. the information content and form are single, because traditional MIS is generally used for transaction processing, and the interface basically follows the field interpretation of the database. It has been confirmed at the beginning of development, and cannot intercept external information such as office information and archives at any time, users only get simple characters and numbers, which are boring and rigid.

6. New technologies cannot be easily applied. Because once a software platform or development tool is selected, it cannot be changed easily.

Iii. Advantages and Disadvantages of B/S

Based on the B/S Intranet technology, its three advantages are substantial:

1. It is the most stable Technology Platform with computing technology. In the C/S era, the most annoying question for users is how to choose a stable platform. Because the previous technology base was not a network, it naturally developed many incompatible technology platforms. From the perspective of application stability requirements of users, each technology platform can be said to be a flash of cake, leaving users with helplessness and distress. The technology was highly stable only when hundreds of millions of users joined the network computer era. It can only develop and cannot be overturned. Everyone can only support and follow it, and cannot control it.

2. It is essentially a client technology, which is especially suitable for large and medium-sized enterprises. In C/S mode, the main part of each application is on the client side. Not to mention, simply installing and maintaining multiple versions of a variety of applications on the client side is unacceptable. The Internet technology is different. Hundreds of millions of users can enjoy the ever-changing and evolving information services through the unified browser interface. In principle, the Intranet removes all maintenance work on the client side.

3. It provides the most realistic Open Foundation for connecting, connecting, and unified services of heterogeneous machines, networks, and applications. It has long been a reality to access heterogeneous databases through the Intranet technology. From ISDN to ATM, to the current popular TCP/IP, it is precisely because of the Internet that broadband IP will become a real and unified service

Data, voice, multimedia) network infrastructure.

However, there are two major problems: one is that an enterprise is an ordered entity with structured, managed, and identified tasks, while the Internet is a disordered set, b/S must adapt to and cater to the orderly needs of long-term C/S. Second, enterprises have accumulated more or less applications based on non-Internet technology. Connecting to these applications is an extremely important and heavy task of Intranet. Lack of support for dynamic pages, lack of integration of effective database processing functions, poor system scalability, difficult security control, lack of integration tools, etc., let us proceed with caution.

IV. C/S and B/S will coexist for a long time

In the traditional C/S environment, a large amount of applications and information have been accumulated, such as various databases and files in various formats. However, the Intranet must make full use of these existing applications and information. Due to its versatility, there are not many standard interfaces available for Intranet technology. For example, the method for accessing the database is still CGI, but directly using CGI is not only difficult to program, but also more difficult to maintain. It is not applicable to a very large number of enterprises, at least not enough, there are also a series of application interface tools. Currently, the B/S mode is only applicable to information publishing, and there are still substantial difficulties in online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. Therefore, the C/S and B/S modes will coexist for a long time, and the interface tools between them are also a long-term requirement.

1. Full-text Retrieval Database Integration

The Internet technology is based on text. It can be said that hypertext demonstrates this advantage. Full-text search is a basic component of the Intranet. The key is to specify the search conditions. In addition, you can easily convert and load all kinds of original files (databases) into full-text search databases. Although there are a series of interface tools, but because the format of the original file is almost infinite, it is impossible to have a final solution, which can only be improved and optimized by the Development vendor. There is also a management system based on (ultra) text files. Because there is no suitable platform, it barely uses a dedicated platform such as relational database or lutos notes for construction, however, either the development is difficult and the efficiency is low, or the user may be troubled by the inherent troubles of the proprietary platform. Intranet technology is incomparable in this respect.

2. Relational Database Interfaces

The interface between Intranet and relational database is an important issue in MIS. We will not elaborate on it here, which is also the biggest difference between Intranet and Internet. On the Internet, some irregular texts are often published, and enterprises focus more on the release of ordered data. This is the soul of MIS. Currently, there are roughly three ways to solve this problem:

1) Many database vendors have released their own "solutions ". These solutions are characterized by their proprietary technologies that are tightly bundled with their database products and development tools. This approach is feasible if enterprises only use or primarily use one type of database. However, the openness of the Intranet will be greatly reduced.

2) use the so-called OLAP tool, which is an analysis tool independent of database products. However, the existing OLAP tool's Intranet version is not mature enough and should have some competition and even mature processes. However, it must be applied to a variety of databases and users with complicated requirements. However, such investment is large and specialized training is required.

3) it is the best practice to provide a universal interface tool for accessing relational databases on the Intranet platform. However, the product still has not achieved the performance of the first two tools, we hope to have a highly functional universal interface tool as soon as possible.

3. workflow Interface

Most enterprises do not need comprehensive and complete workflow tools because full-text retrieval and relational database interface tools have been used to store and share information. The "work" in a workflow belongs to OLTP, and it is best to use traditional technologies at present. For example, office automation is the most natural use of office suites. To collect raw data, you must use form tools. However, the "message passing" tool in the Intranet is a major deficiency. Currently, only the email system is available. However, the main problem is that the enterprise usually uses Lotus Notes and other email systems, instead of directly using the e-mail functions in browsers such as Netscape, a workflow interface tool is required to implement basic workflow functions and call office or form tools to complete basic work. The enterprise's email system is used to transmit work messages and access information through intranet.

Based on the above, it can be seen that B/S still has a long way to take the leading role in enterprise MIS, while MIS has been under long-term construction, the data building created by c/s cannot be rewritten by B/S. It must be analyzed in detail based on specific issues, without prejudice or radical prejudice, fully leverage the C/S and B/S technologies to make full use of them in enterprise MIS Construction.

V. Combination of C/S and B/S

As mentioned above, a major purpose of B/S in MIS is web, and the basic working mode of Enterprise Web is:

1. The web browser initiates an access request to the Web server based on user operations.

2. The server analyzes and Processes requests and accesses the DBMS through CGI for Data Query statistics or transaction submission.

3. cgi generates HTML documents based on the results returned by the DBMS and returns the results to the client's browser through the server.

4. browser displays the HTML result to the user.

For the above process, the workload is mainly in the server part, and there are also several ways to process this part. cgi can be used to access DBMS, and web server can also be used to process databases, there are also hybrid access DBMS, but in general, we have higher requirements for Web server application development. We recommend that you use the Client/Server mode for each subsystem application. Whether you use a small xbase database or a large oracle or sybase database, on the client, you still need to install a utility for the information contact of the data server. For most management users, you can install a browser to compile a CGI program, it even uses the newly emerging JDBC or ASP technology to connect to the background database.

Security mechanisms are particularly mentioned. In traditional client/server applications, it is easier to solve security problems, while web server, we can filter user requests (packet filtering, domain filtering, host filtering, etc.). Because the Intranet is based on the TCP/IP protocol, if the user directly uses the IP address, by bypassing the aforementioned management platform and directly accessing information, Intranet management is just a blank talk. In MIS, how can we solve the security problems of Intranet applications and traditional C/S applications together, without the need for system administrators to manually configure Web servers based on user access permissions and needs, it is best to have a seamless integration with traditional C/S applications in Web server, enables developers to centrally and consistently manage and maintain the two applications in the enterprise MIS architecture.

Vi. Conclusion

for Enterprise B/S applications, from the perspective of the current technology level, it is particularly useful for applications with a small amount of system interaction with users, this mode is not necessarily the best choice for application systems that require a large number of frequent and high-speed interactions. Using the intranet application model does not necessarily replace the traditional Client/Server structure. In some sense, especially from the recent development, the application boundaries between the two are not clear, they are often complementary and complementary. In fact, enterprise MIS uses the B/S mode, instead of requiring applications to be transferred to the Web server, but to choose based on the situation. Then, the new B/S mode in the application needs to be combined with the traditional C/S mode.