Choosing the Right Toolset for your Project
Q
Can you break out the toolset percentages you used for your last 10-20 projects?
A
I have two jobs.
I work for an investment bank in London and I am the CEO of extropia.com.
In each of these lives I have reason to use totally different technologies.
The medium is always the message and the technology always follows the project requirements.
At the bank I require:
- Security
- Scalability
- Speed
- Professional look and feel
I also have at my disposal an essentially limitless wallet for buying the technologies I need.
However, I am limited by the existing IT infrastructure.
As a result, I have chosen the following technologies:
CLIENT SIDE
- 80% Java JDK 1.02
- 15% HTML
- 5% dHTML (Intranet only)
SERVER-SIDE
- 60% Java Servlets and Enterprise Java beans
- 30% CGI/PERL
- 10% ASP
DATABASE
- 80% Sybase
- 20% MS SQL Server
SECURITY
- 100% LDAP with Perl and COM wrappers.
WEB SERVER
- 80% Netscape Commerce Server for Production
- 20% IIS for Internal apps only
- 100% Apache for development
HARDWARE
- 90% UNIX
- 10% Windows NT (internal apps only)
As the CEO of extropia, I use a different set of technologies.
Extropia is concerned with the average web developer who does not have these technological tools at their disposal.
As a result it looks more like:
CLIENT SIDE
SERVER SIDE
DATABASE
- 90% Flat file
- 10% Postgres
HARDWARE
WEB SERVER
SECURITY
Q
Also, where are you located?
Based on your knowledge and obvious expertise, I was wondering if you do on-site consulting?
I am in the Philaelphia area.
I was wondering what your fees were...thank you so much for your help.
I am new to the software industry and am TRYING to work with these types of technologies for the first time.
I am not a developer or programmer in any way, I'm a project manager and am trying to get a grasp of these technologies.
A
Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I really could not take off much time from my work.
I am pulling insane shifts as it is just to get everything done... the thought of missing a day of work would be too devastating :)
Selena Sol contributes to the JavaBoutique's Introduction to Java. Selena curently works for Barclays Capital in London, one of the leading global investment banks in Europe and has worked as a software developer for the National Center for Human Genome research, Microline Software, Neuron Data, and Electric Eye in Singapore. Selena is perhaps best-known for creating the Public Domain Web Script Archive (Extropia) and writing several books on Web Programming (Perl, CGI, Java).
Email: selena@extropia.com
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