This isn't so much of a question as an application note. We're using
Active4D in an interesting way, and I'd like to share it.
In the past, our on-line catalog was generated nightly from a
FileMaker Pro database, via a Userland Frontier script and
AppleEvents. This was OK back when we had, oh, 200 products, but now
that we have about six times that many, it takes far too long to
generate the catalog. It also requires that we maintain an FMP
database that is not integrated with our main order management
system, which is written in 4D.
Thus, we're replacing the old system with a new, whizzy system using
Active4D. Active4D pages form the templates that are used to
generate the new static web site. This allows us to move the content
DB (the former FMP database) into 4D, and integrated it with the
order management system, which allows for all sorts of useful things
(stock level alerts on the pages, automatic removal of discontinued
items, etc., etc).
What's interesting about this is that at no point is Active4D
actually serving up web pages from HTTP requests. It's all being
done with Execute BLOB.
In fact, the catalog generation also includes a step of producing a
big ol' XML file that is sucked into the dynamic side of the site to
handle information the shopping cart system needs; that's also
produced using Active4D.
As it happens, the dynamic side of our site doesn't use Active4D;
it's using PHP. (Our front-line servers run on a platform that
Active4D doesn't support, no slam on Active4D.) Although a bit more
complicated than is my first choice, this does have one interesting
characteristic: because the script delimiters for the static,
generate-nightly side (Active4D) and the dynamic, generate-on-request
side (PHP) are different, there can be PHP code on the template pages
that lies dormant while Active4D expands its own code, only to be run
when it is served up as part of a browser request. Although I'm sure
I could get this to work if both sides were using Active4D, it's nice
that the templates can have full, un-escaped dynamic invocations of
PHP on them.
Anyway, it's a pretty cool system, if I do say so myself, and the
ability of Active4D to be run on BLOBs instead of just in response to
HTTP requests (a feature that they just go around to adding to PHP)
makes it go!
--
Christophe, Fish Head, Blowfish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
