It started yesterday when I was researching and writing content for a PB .NET migration article while in the county courthouse jury room (yes there was wireless access) waiting to be called to serve the wonderful and free American judicial system.  No I wasn't drinking Kool-Aid or licking colored dots off paper.   Today it's looming larger. It started when a Google search on 'well partitioned client server code'  brought me to the SAM's book 'PowerBuilder 9 Internet and Distributed Application Development ' (click the link to see for yourself).   The book was authored by an all star line up of PowerBuilder champions including Bill Green, Berndt Hamboeck, John Olson, Jason Weiss, Larry Cermak, Roy Kiesler,Timothy Beck, Dean Jones, Jim O'Neil and  Millard Brown.

This morning I went to my bookshelf, dusted off my year 2003, green colored, softcover copy and read on. As I started reading chapter 4, Migrating Existing Applications, it hit me how the descriptions of application code inventorying, logic partitioning and migration into  n-tier components with the goal of arriving at PowerBuilder n-tiered or web applications are eerily similar to what I am summarizing and approaching in my .NET migration work.  The names have changed and a few details are different, but the processes and end results are strikingly similar.  The authors did a thorough and great job.

The book's  n-tiered centric work focused on what I would term an optional migration from client/server for large scale enterprise apps. Few took the challenge.  Our task today is much more of an imperative with the steady march toward .NET on the desktop.

In your opinion, aside from the CORBA and EAServer issues.  How are things different when partitioning into assemblies or web services?

Speaking of Deja Vu, if you're a '70s rocker or a fan of '70s music, here's a musical Deja vu Check out this classic song