There was an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that mentioned
ADP spent years and millions of $$ trying to convert their Auto Dealer
package to Visual BASIC.

Now this is a great newspaper, but I don't think they are very tech
savvy...

Anyway, the article's point was that ADP was able to demo the same
conversion using PHP in just two months, implying that they were going
to write the entire Pick application over in PHP..

Does this make any sense? It seems every year we have more acronyms
that we all are supposed to learn... (who can forget SOAP?).

I though PHP was just sort of a scripting language... maybe I should
learn it..

I wonder if they're just doing the UI in PHP and getting the data out
of their legacy MV database.

Tedd's got it. That's exactly what we're doing.

Rob Allen
ADP Dealer Services
Portland, OR

Hi Tony,

FYI, virtually all of the demos referenced from the above at URL:
http://flashconnect.rainingdata.com/...mos/index.html
Are dead in the water, you might have your friends @ RD look at them.

<SNIP>

Why would you say that? In the interest of accuracy, while PHP is used
heavily to produce HTML output, it normally writes to stdout and there
is very little HTML specific stuff in the language.

There is a command line interface and with php-gtk it could be done as
a full blown GUI. XML? DOM XML? ncurses? and so on? Pick your poison.

HTH,
-Tom

<SNIP>

"Tom deL" wrote:
They work for me, the FC server is definitely up. From the main index
check the Requirements and Setup link at the top of the program. Some
demos require a small component to be installed to your PC. Don't
worry, they're safe, I wrote them, and I know no one else has ever
touched them. If the demos do go down at some point I'm not going to
be the one (again) to contact RD to tell them they broke one of their
best marketing tools. Showing off their technology is their business.

I was thinking about an IDE that allows someone to drag/drop
components to build a web page, with PHP as an integral part of the
page scripting. Maybe Komodo or Eclipse are candidates for such a
thing. PHP is object oriented enough to work with GTK and other
software to do things beyond its scripting abilities, but PHP does not
itself include any UI-rendering features and is not the engine under
any GUI IDE that generates UI's. So I'll maintain that comparing PHP
to VB, which is integrated with its "WYSIWYG" IDE, is apples and
oranges, and that PHP itself simply doesn't have those abilities and
isn't used like that. I've never been to a PHP-driven web site that
uses GTK to render a browser-based UI and I suspect I never will.

My best,
T

Hi Tony,

That was comforting enough that I downloaded the 3mb or so. When my PC
wanted to open them with wine things began to sink in. Frankly I hadn't
even considered this to be a browser issue as I couldn't imagine in Q3
of 2005 that a commercial demo of onblur() and so on would be browser
specific.

Are they maybe tired of answering questions about what the demo's are
supposed to demonstrate? To your average MAC or Linux user (or Windoze
user who got tired of the spyware and is using Firefox) they simply
appear to be broken for no apparent reason.

When running wine/IE I can see the charming garden gnome as well. If
this is required (or even a good idea) and you have to make people
install software to view him, wouldn't something like MM Flash have
been a better approach? While I am no Flash fan, that would seem to
offer several advantages:

The folks you are asking to install software are likely to have more
trust in MM than (no offense) Tony G. or RDUS for that matter.

This would allow you to reach people using most modern browsers with
your animations.

Maybe I am in an odd business sector (I often deal with publishers,
magazines, photographers and art directors) but I can't afford to blow
off MAC users or other non Microsoft users.

Is anyone (around 30% in some market sectors according to several
surveys) who doesn't use IE as their browser viewed as a non-prospect
by RDUS and apparently your clients?

<SNIP>
Ah, I missed the stipulation in your OP that the output target was a
web browser ... a Microsoft web browser. If that is your target then
there is no argument that visualBasic is likely the best tool.
-Tom

Tony's (now RD's) demo was designed to show some of the things
FlashCONNECT can be used for. It was put together for the Pick Systems
Worldwide Conference in 2000 - before Pick Systems became RainingData.
I'm 100% confident that if Tony had still been at RD the demos would
have been updated to incorporate more features and demonstrate much
wider capabilities by now. As it was I can atest that the demos were
very impressive back in 2000. If you had been there and seen Tony (and
Jack) do that presentation way back then you would most certainly have
been impressed. Again - the point of the demos was to demonstrate that
FlashCONNECT can be used to perform a wide variety of tasks - much
wider than simply serving up bog standard HTML - and to encourage
existing and prospective FlashCONNECT users to take the techniques Tony
demonstrated and expand on them. Back then FlashCONNECT was very good
value for money - it was free. Back then it was Pick Systems and FC was
their primary connection tool to enable interaction with the web. Back
then Pick Systems was a company run by a fresh team of people
enthusiatic about the future for Pick. FC is no longer free. Tony's
demo suite has been left to stagnate - and has been unavailable from
time to time. Pick Systems became RD with the merger of Omnis. I don't
know if anyone successfully integrated Omnis Studio with Pick.
mvDesigner was an attempt - but I don't know how successful that was.
What I do know for sure is that Tony cannot be blamed for putting
together what was and remains RD's best marketing tool ever - and
certainly not for any failure to keep it up-to-date.

Mike.

I should have made the point that the demos could and should have made
crystal clear that FlashCONNECT will work perfectly well on just about
any combination of browser and web server. VisualBasic a better tool?
Better than any of the tools you can tap into directly from PickBasic
with FlashCONNECT? Ya reckon?
Mike

Hi Mike,

This is not to denigrate Tony's efforts but:
Back in 2000 some folks had been down most of these roads and learned
some important lessons. Aside from overdoing the cutsey animations,
(something unlearned in WinXP?) one of the lessons that I learned was
that to properly serve my clients I couldn't simply refuse to allow
prospects access based upon my (lack of) ability to provide cross-
browser support or choice of tools.

By the time y'all were providing the technical means with which Al Gore
could invent the Internet, I was on my fourth production method of
providing dynamic content, some previous including WebStar's scripting
languages and somewhat MVWWW-like www-sql. Ultimately I pretty much
settled on a combination of PHP, C, javaScript and mySQL or postgreSQL
although I have been known to use the dreaded MM Flash when required.

I had also been though a half dozen or so experimental methods
including a homebrew pre-FlashCONNECT TCP connector and a couple of
swings at FlashCONNECT. These last attempts convinced me to abandon
the idea of using PICK due to licensing costs as well as myriad
technical and security issues. None of these were deal killers alone
but together they sank the PICK/WWW ship for me.

Until openQM came along ... now very soon I will have the very best of
both worlds.

No one is blaming anyone for what someone else might do. Not wanting
to paint with too broad a brush (while that *does* seem an acceptable
practice here), the PICK community seems to have some very provincial
views of the means through which web connectivity should be
accomplished.

When I see unchallenged statements referring to Apache making inroads
into Microsoft's dominance in the web server market and the like I
just have to shake my head. Similar attitudes along the lines of 'Since
Internet Explorer came installed on my PC, everyone must use it' lead
to using tools simply because they are easier.

In another thread someone said that they were in the 'ivory tower'
situation of providing an intranet application. When in this sort
of situation (which could be argued to be the case with ADP), one has
the ability to dictate to visitors which browser they will use. This
makes development much easier because all of the variables are thrown
out the window.

The reason that I keep mentioning these things (browser support) is
that there seems to be quite a bit of confusion about the difference
between the above 'ivory tower' and a 'presence' web site in which the
purpose is to sell a product or service - and where the poor web
developer is unable to control which browser is used. Life is a bear
when one must target the LCD while providing dynamic sites.

The RD (ex-PickSYS) site is a presence site and they made a poor
choice IMHO - even 'way back then' - when everyone else in the world
was dealing with these issues.

The extra cost of making 'one of their best marketing tools' able to
appeal to all of their prospects would have been an easy sell IMHO and
I am a crappy salesman.

It is my hope that the many non-web savvy CDP folks don't buy into
simply chasing away prospects because it is easier. If the client (or
employer) isn't savvy on these issues they soon will be when people
begin complaining about lack of access. Unfortunately, most won't
complain but will rather move on in a few seconds to a competitor whos
site was designed to allow full access.

That is one of the reasons that I always complain (to the sales folks,
not webmaster with vested interest) when I encounter a prospect killing
web site.

Thanks for your input,
-Tom

Hi Mike,

Thanks for reiterating my point.

Another salient point: I reckon that if tools are designed with a
particular environment in mind, those tools will work well in that
environment. This might account for the fact that so many MV/Web
solutions are IE only (or wish they could be).

That might also account for the unfortunate fact that there are
increasingly fewer people in the world who know that PICK/BASIC
exists.
-Tom