Gustav Brock
gustav at cactus.dk
Thu Oct 9 10:58:09 CDT 2003
Hi group Well, today I went to this hands-on seminar, and I'm impressed. The core of the engine is an object oriented data store. You create as easy as in Access - in a very nice designer using a basic like language - classes for storing data. When compiled, these classes are at once compiled too - and represented - as tables via ODBC and JDBC, classes via C++, Java, ActiveX (COM), .net and XML, and you can access the data simultaneous via all interfaces. These layers are all highly efficient they claim is the main reason for the high speed of the engine next to the speed of the engine itself. Further, you can create CSP pages similar to ASP and JSP pages with a direct connection to the engine. An add-in for Dreamweaver is offered with wizards for creating web pages. These pages are interesting as they offer live update of presented data via either a server call or a hidden frame meaning that requery or repaint of the displayed page is avoided - this is in my opinion mandatory for anything serious application-like running in a browser. The best perspective of this, in my eyes, is that you can start using the engine and your proven tools whatever they might be (Access) while moving to or adding other interfaces like another language, a browser interface, XML or web services (SOAP). Rome was not built in one day, remember. The engine scales to shadowed servers, clusters and TB size with no more efforts than within reach of a developer (we are impatient and really have no time for this, you know), and it runs on close to anything including WinNT/200x/XP, Redhat/Suse Linux, Solaris, OpenVMS, Tru64, HP-UX, AIX, and Win ME/98 - even Win95 - and MacOX with the next release - requiring modest hardware only. /gustav >> Just noticed this option for a free developer license: >> http://www.intersystems.com/downloads/index.html >> Anyone having experience with this engine as a backend for Access or >> otherwise? >> The free license doesn't allow you to sell your apps. It is, however, >> not time limited.