Software solutions panorama

under construction

This page is intended for managers, and its goal is to point out Pliant and alternative solutions advantages and limits.
I may not be fair because I'm the Pliant author, but on the other hand, I'm not saling Pliant, so the information provided here may still be more accurate than the one you receive from commercial companies. Anyway, you will find here a few guidelines that you should keep in mind whatever solution you will select at end.

This is a very common senario: you want to build a database for organizing various informations about your business (status of each order and so on)

Pros:

The user interface makes you staff feel at home earlier.
You can find plenty of third tier companies to help you start.

Cons:

Cost over the long run is very high, for two main reasons:
- Everyday small problems generate frequent extra costs because overall stability is low (in very few words, the Microsoft products are too much feature rich, so too fat softwares, and fat means unreliable).
- Very poor support of standards (even home made ones) results in upgrading one part of the system (in order to correct a bug) will break the other one so generate extra costs. This is unlikely to change because selling beta quality softwares reduces Microsoft development costs (making the software very reliable is the most expensive part of the development process), and at the same time increases its incomes because you will have to upgrade constantly since bugs in old softwares will never be corrected.
The security of the overall server is a problem if you plan to open to the Internet.
The consistency over the Microsoft product line is mainly in the user interface, and if something goes wrong, you will be in great troubles because you cannot dig in the source code in order to discover the real problem.

Conclusion:

This is the kind of solution that looks bright during the first year, and that prooves to be a disaster over the long run.

Pros:

IBM solutions are very serious solutions if you need top scalability.
High quality massive support is available.

Cons:

They are just as easy to start as Microsoft based solutions, only if you can by massive support.
Source code is generally not available so you will not be abble to solve the problems without the help (and high cost) of the support.

Conclusion:

When compared to Microsoft solutions, these have two key differences:
- The code is much better quality both in stability, security and scalability, so you probably get smaller everyday problems extra costs.
- You will need massive support anyway, both for easy starting, and on the long run.
These where clear (because the only ones if you needed stability) solutions before the free softwares take off.
Nowdays, Debian+PHP+MySQL will be a better option in most cases, but if you started several years ago with one of these solutions, it's probably not that easy switch. Good luck.

Pros:

Runs smoothly, and for a long time (Debian is evolving very smoothly), when properly settled.
Can carry nicely quite high load.

Cons:

Your custom application will be fat because of plenty of glue code in PHP/MySQL interface and PHP is not that powerfull.
A fully functionnal Debian + MySQL + PHP system is quite a lot of very different stuff so you need very much knowledge to master the all thing, so you need more motivated staff at start time.
Linux distributions are precompiled code, so if you get a problem and so need to run the application in debug mode, compiling from the source can be anything from easy to nearly impossible.

Conclusion:

This can be a very good solution if you have a large IT department, and have a resonably small custom application to develop, since you know the initial development cost will be high but then it will be reliable and evolve smoothly, with low cost over the long run.

Extra remark:

There are alternative Linux distributions that try to be less of a nightmare to settle for mainstream usage, but what you win at install time is lost over the long run because they are not settling a Debian (the most flexible system you can imagine) system for you, but rather a custom one incompatible with Debian, so that any special feature that you will later need will be much harder to bring.

Pros:

There is very few code, and the source is available, so it's fairly easy to read it in case of troubles. Moreover, it's a dynamic compiler, so you can switch to debugging mode at any time in order to help you track the problem.
Your application will be short because Pliant expression power enables to greatly reduce the glue code.
The Pliant database engine files encoding is much safer that classical SQL systems so you are less likely to loose datas.
The security model in the HTTP server is better (everything is signed by the server), and Pliant secured proxy can bring much higher security than standard solutions.
Small help and advises is free on the Pliant forum.

Cons:

The system is very young so stability and scalibility is still to be prooved.
There is no SSL interface at the moment (required if you plan an online shop where clients provide you online their credit card number).
Finding massive support is hard.

Conclusion:

This is the recommended solution if you want to get both low development cost and low cost over the long time. On the other hand, it's resonable only if you are not in a hurry because in case of troubles, you will not be abble to buy massive support.

I need low development cost because I'm a small compagny or my this year budget is small, and rapid on the market because I'm in the hurry. None of the solution is matching my needs, but Microsoft looks the best in this situation because it's the only one that will allow me to get something running soon (so something to show) with the small buget I have !

That's the right solution if your company is rich, but you cannot get more money from your boss until the system stops working.

Now, if you are in a hurry and have a small budget, but know that it will not grow massively, then what you should do is reduce the services that the custom application will bring right from the beginning. This will solve nicely over time.
In such a case, the final decision between Debian+MySQL+PHP or Pliant will come about how poor you are. If you are mostly in a hurry, and ready to spend quite some money on the support, then select Debian+MySQL+PHP, but if you are mostly poor, select Pliant because you will be abble to master it yourself much faster.