Hey David and John, It was all my fault. My goal for my first Ruby/Rails project is really an Accounts Receivable system for a client. The client has a small business system written in 1980. It is based on 1980 versions of FilePro and SCO . They asked me to make some minor change to it. The code was so ugly (in my eyes; I had no interest in learning a dead version of a 4GL language) that I offered to look into using Ruby and Rails to build a piece of it that would import/export relevant data from the SCO box. So while trying to come up to speed on RoR I was envisioning the simplest architecture I could get away with. In starting to write the app, I had the thing starting to take shape on my machine. When I posted my question about the architecture, I inadvertently glossed over the fact that I ultimately had to have a data server. So I apologize for having such muddled thinking. But despite my sloppiness, you guys managed to see through my haze and pointed me in the right direction. I'm on a roll now! Best wishes, Richard John Wilger wrote: > On Dec 21, 2:46 pm, David Vallner <d... / vallner.net> wrote: > > John Wilger wrote: > > > Most likely, I would > > > go with something like Flex[1] for the client, since it's relatively > > > painless to distribute upgrades that way.Mind you, this is what I said in my first reply to Richard in the first > > place and then went along with the idea. I didn't say the architecture > > is an ideal one or one I would pick, just not without redeeming value of > > -some sort-. > > OK, I must have just missed that post. This thread has about two or > three topics in it, and I was only half following it when I decided to > speak up on that architecture. I went back and skimmed through it to > make sure I wasn't saying something that was already said, but I didn't > re-read every single post closely. Apologies if I offended.