Rev and open source (was "What Rev Needs")

[Devin Asay]

On Dec 8, 2005, at 11:41 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Devin Asay wrote:
>> On Dec 8, 2005, at 10:18 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>>> Okay, I'll bite: what exactly is an "open source strategy" for  
>>> an  engine which is, and will likely remain, closed-source?
>> A recent experience I had illustrates, I think, what David means.   
>> Earlier this year I was writing a room scheduling application in  
>> Rev.  One of the features was that people who requested to  
>> schedule the  room had to be officially associated with the  
>> university. The obvious  answer was our enterprise LDAP server  
>> (open source technology). Rev  can't query LDAP directly, but BSD  
>> Unix (open source) has a utility  called ldapsearch. PHP (open  
>> source) can also do LDAP searches. I  opted for the latter,  
>> because that made my project easier to take  cross platform. So I  
>> found an open source PHP script that would do  the search and  
>> return the results as HTML (an open source protocol).  I deployed  
>> the script on our apache web server (open source) and used  a Rev  
>> 'get URL <url>' command to grab the results, which I easily   
>> parsed in Transcript to get exactly what I needed. When my app   
>> verifies, from LDAP, that the requester is officially permitted  
>> to  schedule, it records the scheduled event in a mysql database  
>> (open  source).
>> I have other Rev apps that have similarly pulled together  
>> disparate  technologies quickly and easily into a Rev front end.  
>> In my opinion  this is an area in which Rev excels--as a rapid  
>> development platform  for writing front ends to other  
>> technologies. In effect, Rev  increases the power and reach of the  
>> latter, showing itself to be an  easy-to-learn "glue" for open  
>> source stuff that's often opaque to non- propeller-heads.
>
> That's a wonderful example, but if I read it correctly it seems you  
> were able to do what you needed on your own, without RunRev lifting  
> a finger.

The main point is that Rev has the right hooks that make it easy to  
pull together into a nice GUI a lot of open source technologies that,  
by themselves, are kind of arcane for people like me. :-) It's one of  
the things that makes Rev a powerful tool--it makes it easy to  
leverage other powerful technologies with no modifications out of the  
box.

I think it's a story we could do a better job telling, just like we  
can do a better job of pointing out how Rev is a better platform for  
creating web-based applications than any web browser. For instance, I  
don't think I'll ever have my students create desktop-based  
applications in my advanced Rev development class any more. Instead,  
everything we build will be web-deployed. Of course, what that means  
is I don't really have to change anything, since any stack can be  
launched from a web server using just a minimal launcher app on the  
desktop. The only change is presentation. Who knows, maybe I can even  
entice some of the students away from our always-full PHP class.  
("Learn rapid web app development with Revolution! Small classes, no  
waiting!") ;-)
>
> For myself, that's the sort of solution I prefer as well:  the  
> fewer the cooks the sweeter the broth. I don't run their company  
> and they don't run mine, and we both like it like that.

I just appreciate Rev letting me borrow from other cooks' pots when  
I'm cooking.

Devin

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University