Re: APIs - Sorry to ask

But Jim's point still applies: consider what backend you may use and
the API issue may resolve itself. For example there are ways in ORACLE
to read ordinary files as if they were tables. I fyou picked ORACLE,
your API is simplified in thay you application doesn't know or care
whether the data is in a file or a real table. So solving the table
versus file issue is rather small compared to the security issues.
It's not simply a question of trusting Staff. Will these hospitals have
network connections? Internet access? Yours would not be the first
system to let private info be hacked.


FWIW, the system I work on now has a JAVA based application that is
fired off by a .NET front end (that handles the login). So will skill
and careful design it doesn't necessarily have to be an either/or
question.

The other end of security is reliability. can you really trust writing
data to FLAT FILES not to be corrupted during a system crash? I've
worked on medical diagnostic equipment and the guiding rule for us was
"better no result than a wrong result".
We went to great pains making sure no test data was corrupted.

So just because these are smaller doesn't make the security issues go
away.

HTH,
ed

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