On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Peter Reid wrote:
> I'm considering using MC for "simple" database type development.
> Basically, I'm developing a CBT package where the students will
> generate questionnaire results and score sheets. These need to be
> e-mailed to an Assessor who'll want to collate the results, sort
> them, select from them, print some simple forms and summaries and
> possibly export the collected results in a form suitable for
> uploading into some corporate database.
>
> Obviously, the Assessors' Aid could be developed in a db application
> such as Access or FileMaker. However, I'd like to keep all the
> development within the MC fold if possible. In this case I'd end up
> designing some pseudo-db files which I'd access using 'read', 'write'
> and seek. I'm not thinking in terms of using cards-for-records (in
> the style of the old HyperCard 'databases'), but of keeping the data
> in text and/or binary files and showing them through an MC interface.
>
> Anyone got any advice about this idea, what are the practical limits
> for this approach, am I mad to be thinking about it??
Using custom properties and/or custom property arrays should handle
this just fine. Performance and reliability should be good with this
approach, and the only significant limitation would be that the full
size of the database should fit comfortably in memory (e.g., on a PC
with 64MB RAM you should probably only consider this if your database
size is only going to be a few MB, on a UNIX system with 256MB RAM 20
or 30MB database should be fine as long as you're not loading and
saving the whole thing every second or two). Something like this
built as a long-running process (e.g. an add-on to the mchttp server)
would be a viable replacement for a lot of things being done with
the big RDBMS systems.
Regards,
Scott
> Cheers
> Peter
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Peter Reid
> Reid-IT Limited, Loughborough, Leics., UK
> Tel: +44 (0)1509 268843 Fax: +44 (0)870 052 7576
> E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Web: http://www.reidit.co.uk
>
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Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
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