Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Sigh... Assimilate me, Oh Microsoft

Author:Dennis Peterson
Posted:4/22/1999; 3:41:20 PM
Topic:Sigh... Assimilate me, Oh Microsoft
Msg #:5215 (In response to 5211)
Prev/Next:5214 / 5216

There is a filesystem object but I've never used it. If you're doing anything complicated you really ought to use a relational database. Some people use Access but it's not scalable. SQL-Server works very well and is easy to use. You don't need to be a SQL guru for most things, just knowing how to do insert/update/select will handle most of it, plus having some idea how to design your table structure. Interdev has some very nice tools for working with relational databases.

The Data Environment is a way of connecting to the database. Basically you define database commands in an easy visual interface, they could be SQL statements or stored procedure calls. You can also hit the database directly from the ASP page, which is a little more work but will save you pain later. Stored procedures are the way to go for performance, by the way.

If you have a copy of Interdev 1 that will actually help you, starting out, if you don't want to use the DE. It gives you the same kind of interface as the DE, but instead of making the DE command it pastes the database code directly into the ASP page. In VID6 you can't do that anymore. Otherwise for someone starting out I wouldn't feel too bad using the DE at first, just be aware you'll probably have to migrate away from it sooner or later.

There are some convenient mechanisms for maintaining session state in RAM. If you want scalability, we're finding out you don't want to keep too much there. We're starting to explore keeping it all in cookies and/or the database instead. Haven't tried it yet though.

Oh yeah, there's a Dictionary object which is basically an associative array. Real convenient. Unfortunately it's buggy and uses a threading model that isn't scalable, it was really designed for client-side ActiveX controls. I saw a newsgroup posting by the guy who wrote it...he said "Sorry about that." We used to have it all through our site, now we've gotten rid of it.

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