Message-Id: <mailto:199504241657.LAA25431@library.wustl.edu> Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 09:52:52 -0700 From: Joe Holmes <mailto:Joe.Holmes@SONOMA.EDU> Subject: Re: FWD>Databases and HTML c To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB
Reply to: RE>FWD>Databases and HTML conversion.
I'm not a member of this list, but a colleague passes messages to me
occassionally. Once in a while, I even feel like commenting...
"While Filemaker Pro has a nice interface it is very limiting in what
you can do with it. It can't be used on its own to export information
to HTML documents nor can it be used in interaction with a Web server."
This is not entirely true. On the Macintosh, FMpro offers some pretty good
AppleScript support, and there are pre-written CGI programs that do a good
job of giving you access to many FMpro databases. In fact, I'd call this a
good (ie: cheap and easy) solution for small flat databases. Images cannot
be stored as GIF, however, so this requires one of two (messy solutions):
Tell people to configure their browsers to handle the image/pict MIME
type
or filter the picture through another program that will do conversions
"on the fly" before sending it to the client.
I agree with the other comments related to FileMaker's speed and complexity -
it has neither feature in abundance, and the lack of GIF support is a serious
performance hit when using it as a back end for WWW servers. If you are
using large, complecated databases, you need something else.
At SSU, we are looking at some SQL solutions, so we can move the databases to
more powerful machines if the databases get too large, but not have to change
the location or code for the CGI interface.
cjh