Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: REST web service APIs

[Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Kelly,

It was just a coincidence that Walmart appeared in an IBM link that was
germane to the topics we've been discussing on this list. Nevertheless, I
felt that I might be egging you on if I were to assert that there was more
to the Walmart story than Node.js. I hope you don't mind ;-)

That could backfire on me if we were to learn that Walmart was spinning up
Node.js instances in order to deploy web-service APIs. I seem to recall
Walmart using Node.js to generate formatted responses to mobile clients and
using Java to provide back-end web-service APIs. But I haven't confirmed
that.

I personally don't view Java web services as a "back-end" interface. I'd
rather view Java web services as a middleware layer.

Given an IBM i database, I would view ILE programs and SQL stored
procedures as the back-end.

I don't mean this discussion to pick on Node.js. I think there is a place
for it. I mostly felt that if you were to use Node.js for generating
formatted responses to browsers, then you should consider web-service APIs
as a way to interact with IBM i.

Nathan.




On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 10:24 AM, Kelly Cookson <KCookson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Yes, Node.JS is not everything Walmart is doing. They have a lot more they
> are doing in terms of building a cloud of services.
>
> My comments earlier-which are indeed shallow-is that Walmart was able to
> handle high volumes of requests (around half of their online Black Friday
> traffic) with their CPU hovering around 1%. Other companies have also been
> able to use Node to process more requests more quickly and reduce the
> servers they use because they don't need as much CPU. The point I was
> attempting to make is that, in real-life situations, Node is fast, scales
> in terms of handling high volumes of requests, and keeps CPU relatively low.
>
> I did not mean to imply that Node was anything more than a piece in a
> puzzle. I often refer to Node as a niche technology. It's very opinionated
> about how it does things, and it's definitely not the right tool for all
> projects. But when Node is used appropriately, it can be very successful.
> (So can other tools. Just saying Node is one tool in the toolbox.)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kelly Cookson
> IT Project Leader
> Dot Foods, Inc.
> 217-773-4486 ext. 12676
> www.dotfoods.com<http://www.dotfoods.com>