Greetings!
Emile has already answered most of these
questions, and so some of my comments can
be quite redundant...
On 1 Jan, Lee wrote:
> To what extent does Midgard offer personalisation services?
Midgard has been supporting personalization via
user preferences since the 1.2 release in August
1999. The user preference system allows attaching
different variables in domain/name=value pairs to
Midgard user records. Besides this, all normal
PHP personalization functionality is available,
allowing personalization for non-authenticated
users by many different ways (like browser types
or cookie content).
> Do you and its other developers hope to offer support and extension
> services for Midgard
I think at this point most Midgard developers are
involved in this project for need of good Web
development tools, and make their living by
building solutions based on the Midgard framework
rather than directly supporting it. Lots of
people in the project are coming from ISPs
and Web development agencies that see advantage
in utilizing Midgard in their businesses.
However, as Midgard gains popularity, there is
definitely a growing opportunity for offering
commercial support and services for the system,
and I wouldn't be surprised seeing something
coming up in that area.
> I presume one of the problems you face in promoting a
> product like this is making it possible for potential
> users to size it. Is there any way of doing this?
Midgard's Web-based management system makes it
quite easy for us to let people evaluate the system
online. Our demo site in Sweden is publicly available
and anyone interested in the system can test it
safely there. Of course, the demo site can't do
much to demonstrate Midgard's integration and
customization functionalities, but it at least
serves to give some feel of the system.
As to promoting Midgard, we've so far withheld
ourselves from promoting it actively outside the
normal open source community forums. This is
because we feel Midgard still lacks some features
and documentation seen as vital for mainstream use.
The version 2 of the application environment is
now nearing alpha release, and should fulfill
those requirements quite soon.
> I wondered if you had added APIs that allow it to connect
> to potential user's existing databases or legacy systems?
Midgard has two ways of database access. The first
is Midgard's own database, which contains Midgard's
own data types(pages, content, style, etc.) and has
to be running on a MySQL database (Midgard 2 will
support ODBC and native interfacing with many different
database systems). The second way is with PHP's
own database connectivity mechanisms. PHP supports
most of the major databases.
Besides database access, Midgard can also connect
with legacy systems via PHP's multiple connectivity
options. Personally, I've seen Midgard interface
with SGML documentation systems, search engines
and application environments like Lotus Notes. However,
most of this happens outside Midgard core in the
scripting level.
> Lee
/Bergie
--
-- Henri Bergius -- +358 40 525 1334 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
http://www.iki.fi/Henri.Bergius
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