Data source options

#11

dawn wrote:

Quote:

was not hosted. In the access vs. ownership mix, I'm looking for a
customer to access the app and own the data.

Your customer can "own" the data, even though it doesn't reside on
their system

Quote:

It sounds like you have the technology, although not in an open source
hosted "free for all to use" way.

ummm, no - at some stage it would be nice to recover some small
fraction of the R&D$ .... interesting that you wanted to own the
application you were developing though .... as an OS advocate, surely
your app would be open source to ??

Quote:

on the web that used this approach. I think that saleforce.com and
other asp apps provided hosted data with download features, and they
are also for-pay services.

Yes, and by keeping the "main database" closer to the "web application
server" they can keep performance levels up .... but I got the
impression you didn't want to house the database either

Quote:

If the database has an api for required actions that cannot be done
through a web-based interface, that would be a problem with this
scenario.

It isn't a matter of "can not be done through a web interface", so much
as it often makes sense to have stuff done at the server. For example,
you could send a 200Mb file to the client to aggregate summary data,
but I think everyone would agree that it would be better to just send
to the 20K of results !

Quote:

is in the details: mapping between 2-valued and 3-valued logic, mapping
ordered nested lists, loose compared to strong typing issues, derived
data (aka virtual fields), database triggers & constraints, metadata,
dates, etc.

Yeah, I know. I've been watching the "maturation" of the XML space. It
may be worthwhile noting that with Visage we don't limit ourselves to
just 3 dimensions ... we support >100, and as you know that is more
complex than anything that is currently mapped in the real world that
I'm aware of

Quote:

Really? OK, you've got my attention. What XML data sources are you
using for data persistence? XML documents in the file system? Any
"XML databases"? I'm all ears.

Primarily Sleepycat/Berkley DB XML for the "real" database stuff, with
a bit of 'pretending' with XML mapping services with SQL Server.
HOWEVER, I'm waiting to have a 'real play' with the new windows file
system, which as you probably know is basically a cut down version of
SQL Server for 'unstructured data', but that looks VERY INTERESTING ...
though I fear there will be some road blocks to scalablity in much the
same way that IIS is "hobbled" on WinXP

Quote:

I understand there might be good rationale, but I can hear the dollars
getting sucked into that project. Look how many folks out there are
working on O-R mapping in light of XML.

We are NOT looking at doing all of this work ourselves! We intend to
stand on the shoulders of giants, and for us the mapping will be done
at the middleware layer.

Quote:

I've lived it. It is interesting, and I'm absolutely certain it is
more fun for he-who-is-not-paying-the-bill

yep! See comment above re R&D$

Quote:

It does sound like you have done what I'm looking for other than the
free-for-use feature. Since I'm looking for all aspects of the
application to be sans-dollars changing hands, I'm guessing that isn't
a match.

And there in lies the rub. Visage ISN'T free - but it is cheap as chips

for what you get. Even if you find the "free software components" to
start building your application, unless you value your time at the same
rate ($0/hr)

Visage also has all sorts of other "neat stuff" that may or may not be
of interest, depending on WHAT you application has to do. If you are
looking at being TRUELY international, then multi-lingual support from
a single code base is just a click away - even multi-byte languages
like Chinese, yet we still work with static pages that can be cached.

Let me know how the San$ works out .... oh, and don't forget to factor
in the lost opportunity cost of NOT being able to start developing your
killer app TODAY :-)

Ross Ferris
Stamina Software
Visage - Better by Design
(Not Free, but cheap as chips)

#12

Quote:

I'm just mentioning web services, whether using SOAP or REST or ..., as
one option. In that case the user would need to have both a data
source and related services (CRUD services, for example).
Alternatively, the hosted service could do direct reads and writes of a
specified data source. --dawn

As I suspected, you know much more about this than I do Dawn. I am (as
these things go) fairly new to Web Services and SOAP. I am working to
implement a framework for multivalue databases as part of my
dissertation and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your findings
if that would be OK?

John

#13

John Bend wrote:

Quote:

I'm just mentioning web services, whether using SOAP or REST or ..., as
one option. In that case the user would need to have both a data
source and related services (CRUD services, for example).
Alternatively, the hosted service could do direct reads and writes of a
specified data source. --dawn

As I suspected, you know much more about this than I do Dawn.

Don't mistake book knowledge for experience. I dabble with some of
these things, but I have written no web services. There are some on
the u2-users list (and I'm guessing here as well) that have.

Quote:

I am (as
these things go) fairly new to Web Services and SOAP. I am working to
implement a framework for multivalue databases as part of my
dissertation

great -- that's up my alley so I hope I can read it

Quote:

and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your findings
if that would be OK?

absolutely. I'll make sure you know where I have hands-on knowledgea,
where I'm well-read, and where I'm just opinionated ;-) In case you
don't have my e-mail address it is dwolt at tincat dash group dot com.
--dawn

Quote:

John

#14

Ross Ferris wrote:

Quote:

dawn wrote:
was not hosted. In the access vs. ownership mix, I'm looking for a
customer to access the app and own the data.

Your customer can "own" the data, even though it doesn't reside on
their system

It sounds like you have the technology, although not in an open source
hosted "free for all to use" way.

ummm, no - at some stage it would be nice to recover some small
fraction of the R&D$ .... interesting that you wanted to own the
application you were developing though .... as an OS advocate, surely
your app would be open source to ??

I often do like open source, but I don't preach it or at least don't
recall doing so. I like to pay nothing for R&D, so I choose open
source, free ware, and free use (e.g. gmail, google) products. I think
there is still a place for software that has a price tag. But, yes,
I'm thinking of open source, but I'm also thinking about free use
software.

Quote:

on the web that used this approach. I think that saleforce.com and
other asp apps provided hosted data with download features, and they
are also for-pay services.

Yes, and by keeping the "main database" closer to the "web application
server" they can keep performance levels up

understood

Quote:

.... but I got the
impression you didn't want to house the database either

In the not-yet-to-requirements phase of this effort, I want anyone who
would like to use the application to do so, pointing it at a data
source of their choice meeting the whatever api requirements.

Quote:

If the database has an api for required actions that cannot be done
through a web-based interface, that would be a problem with this
scenario.

It isn't a matter of "can not be done through a web interface", so much
as it often makes sense to have stuff done at the server.

Absolutely! I'm not looking for anything on the browser side
(javascript) to interact with any persistence API.

Quote:

For example,
you could send a 200Mb file to the client to aggregate summary data,
but I think everyone would agree that it would be better to just send
to the 20K of results !

definitely

Quote:

is in the details: mapping between 2-valued and 3-valued logic, mapping
ordered nested lists, loose compared to strong typing issues, derived
data (aka virtual fields), database triggers & constraints, metadata,
dates, etc.

Yeah, I know. I've been watching the "maturation" of the XML space. It
may be worthwhile noting that with Visage we don't limit ourselves to
just 3 dimensions ... we support >100, and as you know that is more
complex than anything that is currently mapped in the real world that
I'm aware of

I've heard you say that before and I'm not exactly certain I know what
you mean. Do you mean that you can nest tables 100 levels deep? That
is mind-boggling. I cannot comprehend the proposition being modeled by
such a construct, but it would be fun to see a good application of even
more than ten nestings.

Quote:

Really? OK, you've got my attention. What XML data sources are you
using for data persistence? XML documents in the file system? Any
"XML databases"? I'm all ears.

Primarily Sleepycat/Berkley DB XML for the "real" database stuff, with
a bit of 'pretending' with XML mapping services with SQL Server.
HOWEVER, I'm waiting to have a 'real play' with the new windows file
system, which as you probably know is basically a cut down version of
SQL Server for 'unstructured data', but that looks VERY INTERESTING ...
though I fear there will be some road blocks to scalablity in much the
same way that IIS is "hobbled" on WinXP

I understand there might be good rationale, but I can hear the dollars
getting sucked into that project. Look how many folks out there are
working on O-R mapping in light of XML.

We are NOT looking at doing all of this work ourselves! We intend to
stand on the shoulders of giants, and for us the mapping will be done
at the middleware layer.

So you are coding as if it were pick, right. That is what I have seen.

Quote:

I've lived it. It is interesting, and I'm absolutely certain it is
more fun for he-who-is-not-paying-the-bill

yep! See comment above re R&D$

It does sound like you have done what I'm looking for other than the
free-for-use feature. Since I'm looking for all aspects of the
application to be sans-dollars changing hands, I'm guessing that isn't
a match.

And there in lies the rub. Visage ISN'T free - but it is cheap as chips
for what you get.

I don't doubt that at all.

Quote:

Even if you find the "free software components" to
start building your application, unless you value your time at the same
rate ($0/hr)

Now you are sounding like my husband, but, yes, that is the rate I'm
charging myself on this effort right now -- you gotta problem with
that?

Quote:

Visage also has all sorts of other "neat stuff" that may or may not be
of interest, depending on WHAT you application has to do. If you are
looking at being TRUELY international, then multi-lingual support from
a single code base is just a click away - even multi-byte languages
like Chinese, yet we still work with static pages that can be cached.

very impressive

Quote:

Let me know how the San$ works out .... oh, and don't forget to factor
in the lost opportunity cost of NOT being able to start developing your
killer app TODAY :-)

I have a delayed gratification thing going.

And I definitely agree that Visage as well as many other products
offered here are all exceedingly good deals.

cheers! --dawn

Quote:

Ross Ferris
Stamina Software
Visage - Better by Design
(Not Free, but cheap as chips)

#15

dawn wrote:

Quote:

I've heard you say that before and I'm not exactly certain I know what
you mean. Do you mean that you can nest tables 100 levels deep? That
is mind-boggling. I cannot comprehend the proposition being modeled by
such a construct, but it would be fun to see a good application of even
more than ten nestings.

Yes, I mean that we will support >100 levels of nested tables (aka
sub-sub..sub-values). We originally had to support some "interesting"
file structures for Reynolds & Reynolds (Australia - they HAVEN'T spent
$67m, ad have a product that works & is being installed!) that were 5
levels deep.

Because we CAN do this, we actually have used around 6 levels in some
areas of Visage .... maybe 7 now that I think of it, because the
screens that are designd with the Visage toolset are actually stored as
XML (which today is converted to HTML, but tomorrow ....)

Anyway, because we support re-usable components (sort of like ASP.net
web-parts) we could nest for

<PROCESS>
<SCREEN>
<GRID>
<COMPONENT>
<TABLE>
<ELEMENT>
<PROPERTIES>

OK, 8 levels, 'cause we have some other "stuff" under properties.

Last time I looked at some of the MIL-SPEC stuff I saw 12 levels IIRC,
so I'm happy that we can work with anything coming out of the real
world

#16

Luke Webber wrote:

Quote:

One reason why Firefox is more secure than IE is that it
doesn't natively support ActiveX. I like that.

And just to be nasty I like to point out that FireFox has had more
critical security issues of late than IE.

RD&C....
T

#17

At the risk of getting flamed, .NET does everything you've asked, and
contrary to popular contrarian opinion it's completely free.

This could be in the realm of .NET Remoting, which is essentially
getting remote servers to execute functions (out of process calls) and
passing the data back to the caller. It all uses XML internally but
binary transfers are easily invoked for better performance.

With or without .NET, I'd consider Web Services. If you want some
info on WS, you may recall I wrote a series of articles for Spectrum,
angled toward the MV audience, but citing many related technologies
like XMLRPC, SOAP, etc. I also wrote a "beginners" article on SOAP.
All are on our site:
http:// removethisnebula-rnd.com/articles/index.htm
Microsoft, IBM, and other major companies have collaborated to develop
new standards related to Web Services, that area is much more mature
than it was just a year ago, especially related to security.

Rather than making queries directly from client to server, consider
passing the query via a Web Service and then pull back the resultset
as needed in whatever format is convenient. This eliminates the need
for exposing your database directly to an unprotected internet socket,
and allows your client and server code to be a bit more
platform-independent.

HTH.
T

#18

Tony Gravagno wrote:

Quote:

Luke Webber wrote:

One reason why Firefox is more secure than IE is that it
doesn't natively support ActiveX. I like that.

And just to be nasty I like to point out that FireFox has had more
critical security issues of late than IE.

Yet none of the security flaws has bitten me. Whereas with IE I was
getting my shapely arse chewed off. ;^)

Luke

#19

Dawn:

This is pretty much how FlashConnect was designed to operate. The
FlashConnect executable, referenced in the URL, resides on the web server
while the D3 component, an account on the dbms server, creates a socket
connection to the web server. The D3 server can be anywhere, and usually
is.

The URL references the FC executable and also identifies the D3 program to
run (and on which account). The D3 program usually reads in the form data,
does some processing, builds a return web page, using templates or whatever,
then returns it back to the FC executable, which sends it back to the
browser.

U2s RedBack product does pretty much the same thing. It has some additional
IDE components and the you're charged for the U2 account (the server)
component. This makes the U2 solution significantly more expensive and not
likely to be used for expanding an mvDbms developers market, but then not
too many people are using D3 and FlashConnect either.

This explains why it's difficult for mvDbms developers to get out into new
markets and develop new solutions; because the mvDbms suppliers are killing
us with high costs.

Bill

"dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

Quote:

Does anyone have an idea for an architecture with a hosted
browser-based database application where the backing database is not
hosted by the same provider?

If you look at various rich internet applications, the software and the
database are often both hosted. That is how gmail works as well as
emerging hosted word processing applications and other ajax web
pages/apps. There might be an option of pulling the data down to your
PC, such as by using popmail in combination with gmail or e-mailing a
document to yourself, but there is no option on where you store your
data when interacting with the application.

We often use client-based applications with client or server data
persistence (e.g. Word) in addition to the hosted applications with
hosted data. I am looking for any examples of hosted browser-UI
database applications where the user indicates a data source that can
be anywhere accessible on the internet.

This is more likely in the SQL world, but I'm not looking for database
independence -- the specific database tool can be fixed. I'm looking
for database-location independence in an application hosted as a web
browser application.

I would like to write a piece of software that can be used by anyone
but where I host the app and not the database software or data. If
someone wants to use it, they need to have a database somewhere (of
whatever type is required by the application) and the application will
take the data source specification as input. I might want to use a
service-oriented architecture where the read and writes to the database
are not with a direction connection, but I have not seen a example of
that either.

In case I haven't said this right yet, it would be a free for use,
no-installation required, database application where the database is or
possibly where to put the database if it is not already there. People
could then use the very same application, but have completely separate
databases.

There might be more issues than I would want to tackle to do this, but
I'm curious whether there are examples or not. Thanks. --dawn

#20

Bill H wrote:

Quote:

Dawn:

This is pretty much how FlashConnect was designed to operate. The
FlashConnect executable, referenced in the URL, resides on the web server
while the D3 component, an account on the dbms server, creates a socket
connection to the web server. The D3 server can be anywhere, and usually
is.

The URL references the FC executable and also identifies the D3 program to
run (and on which account). The D3 program usually reads in the form data,
does some processing, builds a return web page, using templates or whatever,
then returns it back to the FC executable, which sends it back to the
browser.

U2s RedBack product does pretty much the same thing. It has some additional
IDE components and the you're charged for the U2 account (the server)
component. This makes the U2 solution significantly more expensive and not
likely to be used for expanding an mvDbms developers market, but then not
too many people are using D3 and FlashConnect either.

This explains why it's difficult for mvDbms developers to get out into new
markets and develop new solutions; because the mvDbms suppliers are killing
us with high costs.

Bill

Galling to think that when I started using FlashCONNECT it was free.
There was/is also a UniVerse version which was never released. But for
those two masterstokes, and a couple of others (like merging with Omnis
and letting a lot of their best people go), RD could be riding the
crest of a wave now instead of struggling to keep their heads above
water. So sad. Still - FlashCONNECT remains a sound product imo, and JJ
and Jack are still there - as they have been from FC's beginnings
afaik.

Mike.