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chris nz
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Jul 2, 2002, 11:32 PM
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MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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Are there any issues that relate specifically to the UNIX implementation of MacOSX?
In fact, do you know of any users running AM on Mac's?
And one final question:) Is there a likely speed or other major advantage to running a SQL backend when AM is updated. eg: if we wanted to use the text data from AM for print project output and want to establish a bidirectional link between our layout program and the datasource (or AM for that matter..) until a final "go ahead" has been "set" in either AM or the database.
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Dave
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Jul 4, 2002, 12:05 PM
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Re: [ctnz] MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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ctnz, sorry for the delay in getting back to you! We've actually bee doing extensive testing recently on Mac OS X and I wanted to make sure I had the latest info for you.
It is compatible! Being based on UNIX, basically everything worked the way it should during our tests. The only problem we found was that the "File/Dir Browse" popup window that helps you find the right filepath on your server during install (if you don't know them already) was confused about what was a file and what was a directory, but we've just fixed that, and it isn't a required part of the program, it just helps people find their filepath if they don't know or remember.
I actually think we do have an Article Manager user on OS X, I'll check with Luke to see if he can recall the URL. If you do decide to give it a try and have any problems at all, even a tiny one, we'll get right on it. We're really excited about OS X and having people be able to run our programs on it.
*** If anyone reading this is running Article Manager or any of our products on OS X, post a reply! : )
In fact, I recently picked up a shiny new iMac (with the LCD screen) for home. It's pretty cool to see how far Apple has come in making a UNIX (BSD) based operating system usable for mere mortals.
About about SQL, depending on the speed of your server, if you have more than 2000 articles in the system it will likely be faster on SQL. Also, you'll be able to support thousands more without problems.
As far as being able to pull data in and out of Article Manager. If you have a copy we could certainly provide you with some code that would "export" the article data. It's would be pretty straightforward to "import" it back in as well... but, you'd want to make sure the data was all same, record numbers didn't change and so on.
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com
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chris nz
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Jul 4, 2002, 3:02 PM
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Re: [Dave] MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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Thanx a lot Dave!!
I have just played a little with OpenBase yesterday, and have to say that it's a far cry from what SQL databases used to be like...very smooth and logical interfaces.
Last year we had about 3500 articles at the peak of our production period. Our Filemaker based database set of files was getting a little slow over the web at that time and we couldn't really establish whether it was our internet connections (DSL) or the database. I suspect it was Filemaker due to our use of a couple of plugins to achieve FM to jump through a few hoops...:).
If we were to use a SQL database, but still wanted to use AM as the web interface, in order to have the benefit of text being 'double purposed' at the same time of submission by customers, would that be a potential slowdown? We have also bought LassoPro 5 from Blueworld ealier this year but I haven't really used it fully yet. I am considering to drop Lasso and get into a standalone SQL database, but I wondered what you think of the idea of a 'Connector' plugin to your Article Manager which would let you set a button on the Admin interface to set data to be routed to the database first and then deal with the processing of HTML code separately with a possible/optional delay/timer type setup. Would that achieve what we are after?
I think that you have a great product here and I am keen to try out finding a seriously robust solution for us which will not have to be rewritten substantially if our volume of articles is hitting 20-30000. If that's the case with AM, I wouldn't mind spending the money on a 10user licence or a "Developer Licence" if you ever came up with something like that. Key is the performance factor when you have 20-100 users simultaneuosly hitting the server at periodic peak times.
I will place the order today with guys to get started checking things out...talk to you soon:)
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Dave
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Jul 5, 2002, 10:17 AM
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Re: [chris (ctnz)] MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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Well the first database we plan to support is mySQL, a fast, free SQL server that's available for Windows, UNIX, and OS X. Having 20-30k articles shouldn't be a problem with that.
As far as a 'connector' plugin.. I'm not completely sure what you mean. You want to have the data entered in Article Manager and then additionally sent to another database? Probably the easiest is to have a way to export/import from one data source to another? We could probably make you a simple script to export the data in the current Article Manager data files if you wanted to import them into something else. Perhaps you could set something up to have the data sources "sync'd" every few minutes or something like that?
As far as performance, articles are published as HTML files so the only limiting factor is how many HTML files your web server can pump out a second. : ) When we have SQL support available we'll likely have a dynamic viewer available as well for people who can't spare the disk space for all those articles.
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com
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chris nz
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Jul 5, 2002, 4:01 PM
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Re: [Dave] MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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Thanks for the reply Dave.
Just to clarify the 'connector' plugin...
We use Adobe InDesign 2.0 now for our page layout work, and there is a company that makes a couple of plugins for bidirectional automatic data transfer between the layout program>>document and a data source. Their plugin has a feature which is called 'event driven' update settings. This means you can set this to be on or off for the 'event' of a linked datasource being updated and as soon as that occurs, the scripting plugin is notified by the datasource and a script is activated to update the text in the linked text/layout document. This works bidirectional.
In essence, we would need to achieve the following:
Option 1:
The text (and the images if they are uploaded too) should get automatically transferred into correct layout document. To achieve that we can use SQL database or Applescript Studio to write a script or application to do that. My key question is, what do you think is the most efficient way to achive that when we use AM as the main web interface.
Option 2:
As above, but with the option of turning the web publishing (generation of HTML) side off until a printed version is off the press and delivered. Alternatively we will also look at setting AM to publish to a temporary location which should only be accessible to people involved in the submission/editing process. eg. publish to a password protected directory until primetime. Hopefully, the 'turning off' of the web publishing side of the process does not prevent the other updat event to function.
I hope this doesn't sound too demanding....:)
The above basic description of the dataflow is really the exact opposite of how current thinking goes by most designers and their software. eg. do the design and layout processing of data for the print medium first and then figure out how to get it on the web...but it makes sense to me to figure out how to make the process simpler and more elegant through the use of Articel Manager.
I'll be installing AM now and get cracking on this...I'll be online her for while.
Cheers
Chris
(This post was edited by chris (ctnz) on Jul 5, 2002, 4:05 PM)
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Dave
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Jul 8, 2002, 5:16 PM
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Re: [chris nz] MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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Hi Chris,
For #1, I can write you a simple script to export the data in a tab deliminated format, and then you could use whatever scripting language or tools you had available to import it and pull down the images.
For #2, if you turn off "Auto Publish" everything will work except the HTML pages will not be published. The latest content may still be available through the search engine but users won't be able to link to the pages because they won't be published. When you are ready to go live you could just click "publish all". Another options is to keep the articles all set as "pending" until you are ready.
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com
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Dave
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Jul 8, 2002, 5:25 PM
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Re: [Tipking] MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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I am planning on having  zillions of pages one day... In theroy  .... So I have been watching these SQL threads with interest.... I do not have a clue how to use SQL so I am not a guru...
If you have to learn about SQL or be a guru it will mean we haven't done our job right. <grin> The idea is that it will be so easy to use that you won't have to know anything about it. All you'll have to do is ask your web hosting provider for details on your mySQL server and enter them into the program (username, password, hostname), click a button, and you're done.
As far as server load and speed, yes, published pages will come up very fast no matter what. The only programs that need more resources are the ones that dynamically sort through the data and display it (eg: search engine, admin program, etc).
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com
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chris nz
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Jul 10, 2002, 4:09 PM
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Re: [Dave] MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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Just to clarify the 'dynamic viewer' you mentioned here...
Does that mean the cgi scripts store text data actually in the database and call on the database very time it is being viewed?? or will AM still hold the data in separate text data files? If that were the case, you actually would 'double up' on the data wouldn't you?
Hope I'm not coming across too thick here...
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Dave
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Jul 10, 2002, 5:09 PM
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Re: [chris nz] MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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Hi Chris,
First of all, I want to let everybody know we're talking about future, speculative, features and concepts here. : ) That said...
The data would either be stored in a flat file database or a SQL database, but wouldn't be in both. Viewing the data would involve either publishing a static HTML page that the user could view directly or having a cgi script do a database query and generate a dynamic page. When you publish pages the data does exist in two places, the database and the published pages.
With generating dynamic pages there are all kinds of tricks you can do to minimize database queries, caching results and so on, and you can bet we'll take those into account when building anything of this nature.
We understand that server load (and disk space) is a very important issue and you can bet that whatever solutions we may provide in future we're going to provide options and features that allow you to configure things in a way that best suits your environment... Whether that may be a dedicated server or a $10/mo virtual hosting account.
Did that answer your question?
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com
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chris nz
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Jul 10, 2002, 5:20 PM
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Re: [Dave] MacOSX Unix and SQL question
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pretty well, yes thanks..
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