Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 21:23:14 -0400
Reply-To: Michael Davis <sas-l@BASSETTCONSULTING.COM>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From: Michael Davis <sas-l@BASSETTCONSULTING.COM>
Subject: Re: SAS webAF: reality or vapourware?
In-Reply-To: <003501be8dcc$c3857220$68dc868b@doh.health.nsw.gov.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hello Tim and other SAS-L friends,
webAF is "production" and shipping. I used it for three days prior to SUGI
24 during the webAF class and thought enough of it to immediately request
to license it when I arrived home. The developers did a real fine job. I
expect to have our copy momentarily.
It does exactly what is promised. You create JAVA applications and applets
in an manner that is comfortable to a SAS/AF programmer. The development
environment is complete... you need not license any additional tools to
make it go (except see my note about the MS SDK). The objects provided
differ a bit from those provided by SAS/AF but my impression is that the
stuff needed to replicate my SAS/AF Frame applications is all there and
then some.
During class, I picked up a few pointers that did not make it into the
course notes. You can run both the web server and other components on a
single PC but probably need to bump up the memory to avoid paging virtual
memory to disk. The instructor recommended that your computer be equipped
with 128MB for Windows 95/98 and 256MB for a Windows NT machine. Tonight's
project was to "open the can" and plug in that 128MB DIMM so as to be ready
when the delivery man comes with that box from Cary.
Also, due to a licensing quirk that I don't really want to detail, the
instructors and the webAF developers recommended that anyone using the
product go out and download the Microsoft JAVA SDK, which is free.
Apparently, the MS SDK contains a JAVA compiler that is appreciably faster
than the one bundled in the product, licensed from JAVASoft.
There is no built printing support, basically because printing support is
not an inherent feature of JAVA. The plan is to include the ability to
create PDF (Acrobat) documents in a maintenance release later in the year.
I imagine that there are tons of other workarounds to this shortcoming that
can be employed.
Last, it became obvious very fast that if one wanted to do the kinds of
customization that is commonly done with SAS/AF Frame apps, one needs to
learn JAVA. Not a bad skill to cultivate but it does require adjusting
one's thinking towards the OOP model.
- Michael "Mad Doggy" Davis
-----------------------------
At 07:03 AM 04/24/1999 +1000, you wrote:
>Is webAF (as described in the present tense at
>http://www.sas.com/software/adevstudio/webaf.html) actually available? Has
>anyone used it? Impressions? We are doing development with SAS/IntrNet,
>which works fine, but the limitations of the basic HTML form/CGI interface
>are beginning to frustrate us. A SAS/AF-like environment which runs in a Web
>browser (which is what webAF promises) is just what we need.
>
>I was also amused to read at
>http://www.sas.com/new/preleases/041299/news7.html that the late 1999/early
>2000 delivery of a (usable, production-quality) upgrade to SAS V6.12 is in
>fact a stroke of marketing genius designed to take advantage of post-Y2k IT
>expansion plans. Obviously they are still using a beta release of PROC SPIN.
>
>Having gone through the pain of migrating from SCO UnixWare to Windows NT
>because support for UnixWare was frozen at V6.11,
>I was less amused to read that Version 8 would be supported on SCO Unixware.
>I think we'll just stick with Windows NT...
>
>Tim Churches
Michael L. Davis
Vice President
Bassett Consulting Services, Inc.
10 Pleasant Drive
North Haven CT 06473-3712
Internet: michael@bassettconsulting.com
Web: http://www.bassettconsulting.com
Telephone: 203-562-0640
Facsimile: 203-498-1414
Messages: 888-477-1412
