Hi Brian,
Thank you for this exhaustive documentation of your work. I especially
enjoyed the Tips page. It is impressive that you are able to form a
business around it. The new languages and systems you have learned form
quite an impressive list: DataPerfect, t-log format, CGI and HTTP, Perl,
HTML, CSS, XML, XSL, XPath, XHTML, Flash, Apache, Linux, DOSEMU, MIME,
PDF, sendmail, etc.
To use Firestorm effectively, one would need to learn just DataPerfect,
CGI and HTTP, C, Firestorm, HTML (or preferably XHTML). And, I can see
that CSS would also be very useful. But the C programming language is by
far the hardest of these, which gives your approach great value.
Just over a year ago, I began work on DP-web, which would allow reducing
the list of needed languages to DataPerfect, t-log format, and HTML (or
XHTML). To do fancier things, one would need to learn CSS, MIME, and
sendmail, and possibly the XML, XSL, XPath family as well.
DP-web is provides a single Perl script similar to yours, that uses
DOSEMU to run DP in silent mode. The Perl script however is universal.
It depends on a DP database to hold the information that varies from one
of your Perl scripts to another, including a mapping from a short name
to the report number(s) to run. But, the user of DP-web would not have
to understand the Perl/Firestorm/DOSEMU portion of the system.
Really, I think the hardest part in doing this is changing one's point
of view from the desktop to the Internet. As you point out, it is easier
to do it for a new application than to retrofit an existing one. And,
much of the work is in designing the web pages themselves, and the
relationships between them. DataPerfect makes the analogous thing on the
desktop (panels and the relationships between them) very easy. I have
not found any web authoring tools that make this easy for the Internet.
My own "flagship" web application (a joint venture with Tony Perez) is
"Know & Enjoy Mexico" (KEM), went into operation 9 years ago. It is
based on an existing DP application, belonging to Tony, who did all of
the web page design, including the relationships between the different
kinds of pages. This made my job, of generating each type of page from
the database, much more straightforward.
I have implemented a few other applications using Firestorm, and it is
quite a lot of work. Also, as you point out, changes are very difficult
to realize. The portion of the work done in DataPerfect is actually very
easy. It is the HTML coding of the web pages, and the writing of C
programs to generate them which is most challenging.
One direct comment is to answer your questions about Firestorm in part
7, the paragraph on AJAX. It is very possible to use it with an
application where the STR file is changing. The KEM project has
undergone several database structure changes, but it is rather difficult
to manage these changes, so I resist them. Other Firestorm applications,
including DP-web itself, use writing to the database extensively, and
this works very well. KEM uses it to count daily accesses to each type
of page. BTW, the scripts used to return text data to the AJAT sample
you mention are very simple Linux shell scripts that make use of the
Firestorm command line interface.
Many thanks again for sharing your work with all of us.
Best wishes,
Bruce
KEM is at http://www.knowmexico.com/
DP-web is at http://DP-web.net/
Firestorm is at http://sanbachs.net/firestorm/
Brian Hancock wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I promised some time ago that I would document the work that I have been
doing with web enabled DataPerfect applications.
Because I was involved with a soccer club I have had an ideal test bed
to try out DataPerfect. This is not just producing static webpage but is
online interactive with the database.
Using DataPerfect as a backend web application may not be everyone cup
of tea, but it offers a myriad of opportunities if you are willing to
give it a go.
I started writing the details up as an email and realised it was way to
complex so I have set up a few web pages that tells the story. The
website it refers to is at: http://www.brileigh.net/bws and the story is
at http://brileigh.net/bws/story
I hope people can give me some feedback.
Thanks
Brian
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