Who is doing what with Revolution

[Richard Gaskin]

Gary Thompson wrote:
> What are the possibilities of Revolution?

Endless.

> Are there any (or many) commercial apps built with it?

Hundreds, if not thousands.  Many are used in-house in corporations and 
don't make their way out into the world at large, but a large and 
growing number do.

> Are developers using it to prototype an idea than switching to some  
> other tool?

Sometimes, and sometimes they start that way and wind up delivering the 
finished work in Rev once they find out how capable it is.

Often Rev is used start to finish from the outset.

> Is multimedia a prime focus of Revolution?

It's a strong part of what makes Rev powerful, but I consider Rev more 
of a general-purpose app development tool with strong rich-media support.

> Could I build a business around Revolution? 

Many of us do. :)

> By this I mean either  build 
> a software line of products or is it better suited for building  custom 
> one-offs for consulting jobs or????

Rev provides hooks for some of the most popular database engines, and if 
your needs are modest you can use arrays or lists for a reasonably 
efficient RAM-based database.  Some use cards for records a la 
HyperCard, and while that will work the inventor of the engine doesn't 
recommend it for more than 5,000 cards.

> Are there certain apps you shouldn't try to develop in Revolution?  Such 
> as intense number-crunching?

Yes and no.  Rev does surprisingly well on a great many tasks, but as 
with any tool there are strengths and weaknesses.  Highly iterative 
number crunching has been cited as one, but I suspect the boundaries 
have not been fully explored.

Should you come across a task that could benefit from something like C, 
you can use C to write an external for that one task and still get all 
of the other benefits of writing everything else in Rev.


For some examples of products made in Rev:

Case Studies at RunRev.com:
<http://www.runrev.com/section/case_studies/>

A number of Rev-based products are also listed here (though the list 
isn't nearly as complete as it could be):
<http://downloads.runrev.com/stacks_apps/>

Chipp Walters' Hemmingway is described here:
<http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/RunRevCaseStudies/Hemingway.htm>

Trevor DeVore has some cool products here:
<http://mangomultimedia.com/education/v730_intro.htm>

A fascinating multimedia geospatial internet app:
<http://ddm.geo.umass.edu/>

A really cool simulation series:
<http://reactorlab.net/>

Tools for educators:
<http://revolution.lexicall.org/stacks_education.php>

Some good articles from Novell on Revolution:
<http://search.novell.com/qfsearch/SearchServlet?bbshow=true&bbindex=&theme=&encoding=iso-8859-1&noredirect=&collection=Novell&query=revolution&hdrsrchsubmit=Search>

An old list of some of the stuff I've worked on (if I can slow down 
making new stuff I might get around to updating this):
<http://www.fourthworld.com/casestudies/index.html>

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
  _______________________________________________________
  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com