Hi Bruce,
I am finding that a bitter pill to swallow myself... having been master over
all aspects of a DP application, and then realising that in those other
equally important parts of the application, I could be my own weakest link.
But then, there is an upside to this. The speed and reliablity of putting
together DP applications, means that you can put together almost
standards-based applications. Almost everyone I talk to about the system
asks whats running at the backend, and I find myself having to defend using
a DOS app. One of the most compelling arguments that I have been able to use
to counter, is that if DP and DOS didn't cut it, then by offering to
disclose the XML result schema and the GETs/POST's required, it should in
theory be easy to replace DP with what they may consider a "more serious"
database.
What I would really like at some point to do is to write a SOAP interface
(which quite frankly could be massive amounts of scripting)... But, even if
you never got to use SOAP in an application, by the very fact that you could
demonstrate an ability to use a Web Service standard I think you could
overcome objections, of using DP as the backend.
Regards
Brian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Conrad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "DataPerfect Users Discussion Group" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 7:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Dataperf] Web enabling DataPerfect
Hi Brian,
Sorry for the delay--we have been traveling back to the US and then
settling back in. Your message has been very thought provoking. I have
always tried to do everything by myself, and had not thought of partnering
with (or hiring) a web designer. DataPerfect lends itself quite well to
one person doing a major project, but that only holds for the DOS world.
In the web world, I can see that I am going to have to change my ways and
involve another person to be effective--or become a web designer as well.
As for your SSH difficulties, would you like me to reset your password? If
so, please reply privately with the password you would like to use.
Best wishes,
Bruce
Brian Hancock wrote:
Hi Bruce,
Yes it has been quite a learning process... however the further I went
the further I realised how easy it is to compartmentalise the work.
If you start with the premise that DataPerfect only ever exports XML. you
only need to know very basic XML, ie elements, and attributes and the
general design of the structure, very simple work. The PERL scripts are
somewhat generic, and usually from one interaction (script) to another I
am usually just changing the name of the DataPerfect report number and
then renaming the script, and as I said it could for many things all come
from the script as to which report to run, although that thought does
send nervous chills up my spine.
But back to the compartmentalising. You can readily get a web designer to
design templates and the page, you just need to tell them to make all of
the links to resources on the page absolute HTTP references (eg
http://www.domain.com/eimage.icon.gif rather than icon.gif. From there if
it is not in XHTML (you should have asked the web designer for that in
the start).
From then it just needs an XML programmer to write the XSLT from the
DataPerfect XML, and from there you might have the core of the
application.
If you write the DP application to export the HTML then any maintenance
to the HTML needs to be done in DataPerfect. I am no web designer, when I
design web pages there are usually no graphics, and no pretty things, no
clever interface things, so I would be far better letting someone skilled
to do that part of the project. Getting an web page designer even a good
one is really a pice of cake these days.
For me this project was a voyage of discovery, so now I know what is
possible, it will not necessarily mean that I will be the one to do it.
With regards to your Firestorm application one thing which worried me
about writing back to the database, was that at the stage of its
development when I tried it, it meant that automatic features like Keep A
Total, Auto-Create Record (thru link), Cascade-Delete, Cascade-Update did
not work. My attraction to the DP Silent mode was that you are using all
the standard features of DP, just that you access them via reports rather
than via the desktop. Or perhaps I have missed something in Firestorm...
Quite apart from wheither using Firestorm or DataPerfect Silent Mode, as
I said before the advantage of XML is that the application can totally be
separated into the application and the presentation. It would be possible
to create a generic application, that you could give to web designers
(with XML skills) just the the details of the posts, and the scheme of
the return XML. If a client wanted to update the look and feel of the
website and web application every 3 months that would be no deal at all
for the DataPerfect programmer.
By the way, I tried using the DP-web.net site, and I got totally screwed
up, I tried to SSH into it so I could clean up my mess and see what was
happening, but the login wouldn't let me there. Is there a trick to that?
I am looking through your notes and I will give some of the stuff you
have there a try.
Thanks
Brian
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruce Conrad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "DataPerfect Users Discussion Group" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Dataperf] Web enabling DataPerfect
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
_______________________________________________
Dataperf mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf
_______________________________________________
Dataperf mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf
_______________________________________________
Dataperf mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf
_______________________________________________
Dataperf mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf
_______________________________________________
Dataperf mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf
