Christopher,
> Well, SAP has pretty consistently tried to apply this strategy to
> their R/3 application, which is _not_ a "limited class of web
> applications."
Aha. The key word there is "suitable". I've supported some SAP-type
applications, and they are messes of spaghetti code that underperform their
hardware by a factor of 10. As well as having chronic data integrity
problems that pretty much require an on-staff application expert just to keep
the thing running.
So I find SAP an excellent example of how *not* to write an application,
unless your goal is to maximize your support revenue.
--
-Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco