Heterogeneous Development

The developer has a difficult job when developing and implementing e-commerce database solutions in heterogeneous environments. The developer must contend with broader requirements and issues than a single platform development effort. The developer may have to sacrifice system performance for portability of code or support issues.

The developer should conduct a trade-off analysis for each option considered. The trade-off analysis should consist of the following criteria list at minimum (not in any order of relevance). The developer should assign a relative weight to each criterion based on the system requirements and then rank each alternative in accordance with each criterion. The sum of all criteria should give the developer a sense of how each alternative meets the system requirements. Of course, there are intangibles that cannot always be accurately assessed. The intangibles are measured by the experience of the developer or a group of developers as follows:

Performance: Measured in speed or response time.

Portability of code: How many different systems are supported with minimal changes to code?

Reliability and availability: Mean time between failures or system uptime.

Scalability: As performance requirements increase, can the system support higher platforms?

Security: Vulnerability to outside access or system penetration.

Total cost of ownership: How much in dollars to install, operate, and support the system?

Training and support: How many man-hours to train and support the system^[1]?

The e-commerce database developer and implementer must assess these criteria from the operating system to the Web and to the database to determine the best solution that meets the requirements of the application.