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[Richard Gaskin]

Chuck Pelto wrote:

> I'm looking for information to help me consider Revolution as an option
> for developing more sophisticated databases. I've just downloaded and
> unlocked the 30-day example version.
> 
> I'm very familiar with FileMaker Pro. I'm somewhat familiar with Access.

I've worked a lot with FileMaker, and my WebMerge product keeps me using
Access now and then for testing.  Welcome aboard.

> Is there anything someone can point me to that provides a compare and
> contrast analysis of Revolution to FMP?

Most of the differences can be summed up as the trade-off between simplicity
and flexbility.  FileMaker does what it does very well, but to be honest
with you after working with Rev my GUI requirements have been raised so high
that FileMaker never survives the first round of tools evaluation for most
new projects.  I have one small FileMaker job lined up and maintain another,
and everything else here for the last few years has been built with Rev.

If you do a lot of scripting, the first thing to get acclimated to is that
you're finally developing true event-driven apps.  FileMaker's scripting
pretty much has only two events to trigger scripts:  selecting a menu and
clicking a button.   Revolution has the rich event suite from HyperCard and
a good many more to support its expanded object model.

The worst thing about it is you have to type.  The best thing about it is
you get to type.  Revolution's scripting language, Transcript, lets you
build apps as flexibly as 4D but with more readable syntax and in many cases
fewer lines of code.

Keep in mind that the Revolution engine is not a DBMS per se, but more of a
general-purpose application framework, rather like a VM.  While you can
store small flat data sets in property arrays easily in native Transcript
(I've done this for a few thousand records with good speed), if you need
truly relational DBMS capabilities Rev gives you multiple options.  All
three packages (Express, Studio, and Enterprise) include interfaces for
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Valentina, and ODBC.  Enterprise gives you access to
Oracle as well.  Each has its strengths and weaknesses, so if you don't have
a favorite at the start you'll want to learn a little about each to
determine which one is best for the job at hand.  You could even use
FileMaker as your DBMS with Rev as the front-end via ODBC.
 
And of course, when you're done and you want to share your app with others,
with FileMaper you'll need to either make sure the other user has a
FileMaker license or buy the $500 Developer Edition to build standalone
apps.  The $149 version of Rev lets you build standalones for one platform,
and the other Rev packages let you develop and deploy on nearly all modern
desktop operating systems.


> Additionally, I've a few questions:
> 
> [1] Are there plans to enhance Revolution's AppleEvent awareness? One
> of the features I've benefited from with FMP is its robust
> AppleScripting capability. It has been a life-saver via
> inter-application activities. Automation of graphics generation helped
> us reduce our head-count by 60% and product errors by 98% in the first
> year of implementation. Currently I see few calls available in
> Revolution's AppleScript Dictionary.

On the plus side for FileMaker, it does have a robust AppleScriptable object
model.  But with only slightly different syntax you can often get the same
or greater flexibility with Rev's "evaluate" and "do script" AppleScript
commands.  And to the degree that shift migrates code from the AppleScript
interpreter to Rev's you should see quite a performance boost.

For example, you mentioned automation of graphics generation: depending what
that generation is doing you can probably do at least some of that right in
Rev -- resizing, cropping, rotating, and more, with a full compliment of
vector primitives like rectangles, ovals, polygons, lines and text fields.

Most inter-app integration is done with "do script" anyway, triggering
FileMaker scripts, Photoshop actions, etc.

The one AppleScript limitation Rev has that can be problematic in some cases
is that it currently only directly sends and recieves text data.
AppleScript supports binary data types like lists, but these must be
converted to text before Rev can work with them.  Fortunately the cases
where you're exchanging non-text data with other apps are usually few, and
if you run into one I'll bet one of the AppleScript gurus here could help
you with a workaround.


> [2] If I do development work with the 30-day trial version, can my work
> accomplished in that be opened with the live version? I trust so. But
> just want to be certain.

It would be a cruel tease otherwise.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
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 Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com
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