Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Getting Started:
Application and Integration Services

Application partitioning

To take advantage of the AppServer you must split your application into application partitions. The AppServer provides the mechanism for these application partitions to communicate using a remote procedure calling mechanism.

Splitting your application into application partitions promotes a flexible and economical use of computing resources. For example, you can partition your application such that most compute intensive portions are co-located with the OpenEdge RDBMS or an OpenEdge DataServer. You set up the partition by installing the AppServer at this site and access it from your client machine using the appropriate remote procedure call mechanism for your client type.

Using the same machine for the application partition that accesses the database allows you to take advantage of shared memory access, eliminating the need to access the database over the network. The AppServer allows you to configure these application partitions on your network to meet your organization’s performance, deployment, and security objectives. For example, configuring the AppServer with sole access to the database provides a layer of security for the database. Client applications can only query and update tables indirectly through the AppServer. The 4GL code that actually performs the updates and queries is not located on the client machine. Rather, it is located on the database machine and is executed by the AppServer.