Using Revolution for LARGE projects

[Chipp Walters]

Hi Igor,

I've been using RR for a couple of years now for quite a few projects. One
of them is a front end to our Content Management System, Hemingway
(www.altuit.com). Currently, it's in beta, as we only recently started
building the RR client a couple of months ago. Since, then, it's come a long
way, and the user response has been incredible. When finished (hopefully
within a month or so), I'll be doing a write up on our website regarding the
development cycle.

Basically, we took our Hemingway web app and ported the client tier to RR.
We stuck with .asp and COM as the middle tier with SQL Server 2000 as our
database. We created the first working version of HemPC (our name for the RR
client) in only a couple of weeks. (Talk about a .NET killer;-) HemPC has
all the basic features, with the coolest part being the self-updating plugin
architecture.

We have a number of wizards to do things such as Image Manipulation
(ImageGadget Plugin), HTML Text (HTML plugin), HTML to PDF conversion
(HTML_PDF plugin), File Uploads (our own HTTP File Uploader plugin), Stitch
Webs (WebStitcher plugin), Add Bulletin Board (Add Comments plugin), Add
Forms (Forms Plugin), Search Webs (Search Plugin)...you get the idea.

Using this system, it is easy to manage the code (much of it is in the
plugins), and whenever we change a plugin, it is automatically updated on
the users computer. Very simple and elegant! I created a simple internet
connection library where I wrapped a bit of code around libURL to help it
get through firewalls (some not all) and it is used whenever connecting to
any of the Hemingway servers.

Much of the code used for this project was Open Source (from my website and
others), so it was only a matter of stitching it together inside RR. As a
Visual Basic programmer, I can say there is NO way this project could have
been completed as quickly. I don't know RealBASIC (though their head offices
are here in Austin,TX), but I'm very happy with the RR development
environment and the MC engine! Hope this helps.

best,

Chipp