luminousmonkey.org

Google Suggest

Thursday 16 December 2004, 19:40 WST —

I suppose I better jump on the Google Suggest bandwagon. Although, technically, there’s nothing new to it, it is however, the first time I’ve seen the technology used, hell, I didn’t even know about the XMLHTTPRequest thingy until a few months ago.

When I first found out about XMLHTTPRequest I knew I wanted to use it in the work database. At the moment we use MS Access, which does a good enough job if the database is small and simple. However, as is always the way, the needs, or really, wants of the program grew. On top of that, add the fact that it was never designed by someone who knew anything about database design, you might get an idea of how bad this thing is. (Hint: The sales orders don’t use a 1 to many relationship for the order items, oh no, it’s quantity1, quantity2, quantity3, itemDescription1, itemDescription2, etc)

Anyway, the company is kinda learning that sticking to MS Access is not a good idea, we’ve had to look for other options. And of course that’s where we come to be doing the work webpage. Ahhhh, we can use a webpage, it’s not as interactive as Access, but still. Well, that’s when I learnt about XMLHttpRequest, and XUL.

So now, that’s the direction I will hopefully get the company in, barring a small amount of politics.

Anyway, that pointless rant aside, I notice that my friend hasn’t been updating his blog lately. Now I know something has to be wrong when I’m posting on my blog more than my friend who’s only been doing it for a month (if that). What the hell is going on WB?

PHP and the art of SQL abstraction

Wednesday 28 July 2004, 21:16 WST —

I’m in charge, well, basically I am the computer/programming/database/webpage guy at work. So I tend to like bits and bobs that make my job a hell of alot easier. I found one such item with the PHP ADODB set. This nifty little bit of PHP scripting makes working with different types of SQL server a snap, in fact so damn easy it’s not funny.

Thanks to this little do hicky, if I want to migrate the Direct Communications database from Microsoft’s free desktop SQL server (which to be honest is quite brilliant, the only limit I can see from it is that it’s limited to 25 users and only has a command line interface) to MySQL all I have to do is change the little bits at the beginning. Brilliant!

It abstracts the under lying workings of the DB into something my scatty brain can understand. For instance:

$result = mysql_fetch_array( <some crap in here> )

Becomes:

g_Database->Execute( <sql HERE> )

And you browse the recordset in exactly the same way, no matter which database you’re using. And MS ASP junkies will feel right at home, as I believe that’s exactly how ASP does it?