Using Revolution as a CGI

[David Brooks]

I was introduced to RunRev at the 2004 MacWorld. I spent the better  
part of the next 15 or so months converting a HC cgi backend to a  
RunRev backend -- with success. The biggest challenge was in getting  
Apache to produce AppleEvents.

At RunRev West in 2005, Jerry Daniels showed some programs that kept  
data in xml-like text files.  I was in little mood for this having  
just spent so much time on my conversion.  However, the speed was  
compelling. I now have 4 projects running under transcript cgi-s with  
no other scripting. I'm very happy with this.

One of these projects has some public stuff available:  dwbrr.unl.edu/ 
Zoo
Another, the Advanced Placement chemistry descriptive chemistry  
practice site, will go public in about 2 weeks.
Last semester I ran my course entirely from RunRev cgi scripts, and  
I've just completed making the system more friendly to mulltiple users.

Several of my students are working on projects developing thin Web  
clients. I see us developing some Ajax stuff with transcript, too.

Developing these cgi systems is much harder than developing stacks  
because of the development tools. I've built a few stacks to 'test'  
cgi scripts, and will share these when they become more robust.

Meanwhile, many folks here have developed free and/or low cost tools  
that I recommend.  Look at Jerry Daniels, Richard Gaskin, and Ken Ray  
as outstanding sources. (Daniels inspection gadget tool has saved me  
a couple of hours.)

For starters, the written materials developed by Jackie Gay on cgi  
are very, very helpful.

Overall, I'm VERY pleased with transcript cgi-s.


Dave Brooks


On Jan 8, 2006, at 2:34 PM, Sivakatirswami wrote
> oops, I lied (smile) we do have PMWIKI running and that is PHP...  
> but I don't have to touch it, other than set some values in conf  
> files.
> So, yes, I guess we are like JB: 1% php...
>
> On Jan 08, 2006, at 9:55 AM, jbv wrote: