Hello from a Filemaker renegade

[Chipp Walters]

Hi Norman!

First of all, welcome to our User Group. I hope you find the answers you 
are looking for.

I run a company which makes enterprise web apps for Fortune 1000 
companies. We pretty much use RR exclusively for our client-side web app 
development, be it Microsoft or Linux.

You might want to check out an article on our Altuit Revolution website 
about one of our products: Hemingway. Be sure and read the part at the 
bottom about multi-tier.

http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/RunRevCaseStudies/Hemingway.htm

Revolution (called RunRev, Rev or RR) is actually a combination of two 
products: the Rev IDE and the MetaCard engine. Of course, the company 
Runtime Revolution owns both of these, but looking at it this way may 
help you understand it more.

The Rev IDE is an evolving product. Currently, it's at version 2.2. The 
engine development is also evolving as well. It was created over 10 
years ago by Scott Raney, who recently sold it to the RR folks. Raney is 
still involved in programming it.

Generally, one may find a few idiosyncrasies in the IDE. No deal killers 
at all, but a few annoying bugs here and there. Typically, the engine is 
found to be most robust with fewer bugs and a good support team. Many of 
us professional developers code our own plugins for Rev which do various 
things. A quick post to this list usually gets answers from a knowing 
individual regarding whether something is a bug or not...also there is 
an online bug tracking system at RunRev. For the hardcore, there's also 
the Open Source MetaCard IDE which also works with the engine. It's 
pretty sparse and doesn't have the bells and whistles the Rev IDE does, 
but it also is a more robust IDE as well.

Each programmer has his/her own style. Some chose to use the integral 
database features of RR (the cards, fields, etc..as in the old HyperCard 
product). Others choose to hook up directly to MySQL or other ODBC DB 
via built in connectors. I believe there's even a SQLlite connector 
being written. Then there are those (like myself) who prefer a 
multi-tier approach. All approaches are valid and it's amazing what 
people can do. In fact, one individual here (Rob Cozens) has even built 
a 'SQL-like' DB inside of Rev. It's free -- like many resources are in 
this community.

Frankly, I haven't come across anything I can't do with this program. I 
built a pretty cool button generator you can download if you like at 
www.buttongadget.com. It's all coded in native transcript, so you can 
get an idea of some of the possibilities of the product.

Good luck and hope to see you around :-)

best,

Chipp Walters, Aluit,inc