(You): Hi - we’ve got a website and have been selling products online for a few years - our web guy moved to Switzerland though and we need somebody to make some changes…
(New tecchie): Sure, I’ll look at it.

** three weeks later **

(New tecchie): Man, this site is so screwed up. Whoever wrote this had no idea what he was doing. In order to make any changes I’m going to have to rewrite 30 different pages. It’ll take two months and twenty-six thousand dollars.
(You): What are my alternatives?
(New tecchie): Rewrite the whole site. It’ll take two and half months and cost twenty-eight thousand dollars.
(You): All I need is one product added!
(New tecchie): Dude, you should have bought a Dell…
(You): What does that have to do with my website??!!

Buying a Dell actually has nothing to do with your website. (OK, it could…don’t get all technical on me…) But scalability has everything to do with your website.

There’s actually a very simple reason why the above conversation is quite common: the site that you started a few years ago has slowly grown and gotten more complicated. It is now miraculously held together by layers and layers of rules and code, and attempting to change one thing now is like trying to upgrade the middle section of the leaning tower of Pisa. The tower won’t fall down on its own, but don’t start making structural changes!

In order to avoid scenarios like this, I’ve been using a “three-tiered architecture” approach for years. With this approach, the overall structure of your website looks like this:

With this setup, the data (e.g., product and pricing information), is the foundation of everything. A great deal of flexibility can come in, if the business layer is constructed to properly feed the data to the user interface. Here’s what can result:

1. You decide to change your shipping calculations. Those changes are done in one (and only one!) section of code. The formula is changed in the business layer, and the database and the user interface remain untouched.
2. You decide to add a product. Records are added to the database, and the business rules that read from the database automatically pick up on the new changes and carry the data to the user interface. (Result: “Hey, there’s a new product. BUY! BUY! BUY!”)
3. You decide to change the look and feel of your site to reflect your company’s new branding. Brown becomes orange, graphics and logos change, and navigation gets an overhaul. Your search and shopping cart functionality stays exactly the same though, because your business rules have not changed.

Technologies and programming languages change every day (*sigh*), but principles like this need to be applied everywhere. Over the next several days, I’ll demonstrate how we employ these kinds of techniques to provide scalability and stability to our applications.

Clyde is a horse, a Clydesdale to be specific, and he’s real - especially to my daughter.  I’m tempted sometimes to see Clyde and his many fellows (can you have too many stuffed animals?) as mere playthings, but . . . they’re not.  In the wonderful world of my daughter’s imagination, each has a name, a personality, and gifts to share.

So, it was kind of like waking up in “The Velveteen Rabbit” when I found I had a traveling companion with me while traveling out of town this week.  Drawn into her world by this little fragment that had stowed away in my briefcase, I was instantly filled with delight that seems to be the sole province of children.  My imagination took a turn with what his presence was supposed to convey:  Was he sent along as a work-horse so I’d finish with my client quicker and come home sooner?  Perhaps he was supposed to keep watch and guard my computer while I slept?

My delight was only exceeded when I called home that night and she asked me if I’d found any surprises.  I had to string her along a little bit, but then I sent pictures of Clyde helping me at my computer and putting me to sleep - and you could almost see and touch the joy in her voice as she exclaimed “Oh, my goodness!”

 Clyde slept with me each night - I’m not sure if I did that for me, for my daughter, or for Clyde - but it felt right.  It felt real.

Living in a digital world with electronic media where the ephermeral pictures and dialog (like this?) are tucked out of sight and mind on hard disks and NVM, I find that my most cherished possessions are still the ones that I can touch and hold - especially mementos of those I love.  Somehow, if I can just touch something that’s real for them, it becomes real for me, and there we are, standing in a shared reality.  Talk about portals to virtual worlds!

I can’t carry my loved ones with me everywhere I go, but I can be with them wherever I am - so I guess now I’ve discovered Clyde’s mission after all - to bring me into the presence of love and joy with my daughter even while we are physically apart.

Web sites are about sound-bites, so it’s hard to convey a sense of who we are and why folks choose to work and play with us in the messaging constraints of a web site - soooooo . . . we are introducing the Triact Associates Blog, where we will hold forth on topics we hope help you get to know us just a little better