[Gnue-dev] Appserver/Common Issues

[Jan Ischebeck]

Just some points about appserver and forms and 3- and 2- tier setups.

I. Security:

Requirements
1. user authentification (not only against a database)
2. different access rights for different users
3. different forms/reports/processes(GPD) for different users

The first and second point can be done without many changes in
forms/reports/common....
To solve the third point there are three posible solutions:

a) add <if user=...> tags to the form file [ IMHO Very BAD ]
b) download forms from a webserver and let the webserver choose the
right form definition for the right user [difficult to setup, but needs
no change to code]
c) add <if user=> code to navigators process definitions and let
navigator provide the right form definition for the right user to forms
[probably the best solution IMHO]
d) autogenerate forms out of database/appserver metadata [easy
maintenable]

II. Appserver vs. Common

I think we need a delegates/plugin architecture for common. I think so
because IMHO we need a common which can be very powerfull and very lean
at the same time. The "I prefer 2-tier" gnue developers need
authentification adapters, possibly they want to access business objects
too. But they don't want to add another layer, don't want to use 3-tier.
Ok, no problem. Just make these extra functionality be plugable into
common dbabstraction, or even moved from appserver to common.

Jan