The Power of Revultion CGI, what can be done with them?

[Stryder]

For anybody wondering just what you can do with the Revolution CGI engine, and how powerful it is, I'd like to show off my creation:

*EDIT - SITE LINK REMOVED AS PROTEST FOR NO INTEL NATIVE DARWIN ENGINE - EDIT*

which was written entirely, and exclusively in Revolution.

It's effectively a clone of that "other" public auction site, for selling our own inventory only.

The hardest part with a project like that isn't really the revolution programming, but the HTML coding to display your results.

[SoapDog]

Stryder,

that is really nice!!!!

I simply loved it, would you consider writting a case study telling us the difficult parts, how you guys did everything and the like? I think such study would be a nice addition to our reading.

Congratulations
andre

[Stryder]

Stryder,

that is really nice!!!!

I simply loved it, would you consider writting a case study telling us the difficult parts, how you guys did everything and the like? I think such study would be a nice addition to our reading.

Congratulations
andre

I'm not completely sure what you mean by a case study. Each part of the site (browsing categories, bidding, viewing ended items, viewing a user's account, paying for items) is a separate cgi app. For guests, the site employs simple CGI requests, which can be viewed in the URL in any browser. For customers who have logged in, however, the site uses special "tokens" and "session ids" which are linked to secure text files on the server.

Essentially, we wanted a site that used no cookies, or left any 'crud' behind on the customer's computer (Java, etc.). We also wanted it to be the most accessable over the greatest number of platforms and browsers. This made the creation of the above-mentioned sessions and tokens essential. The id of these temporary "cookies" held on the server is passed through each CGI, and the CGI reads these files to interpret who the user is, what they are doing, etc.

HTML is displayed using templates. There are templates for the categories, for items, for the user's account, etc. Embedded into these blank templates are tages which get replaced by the CGI (using [*TAG*] ). To change the entire look and feel of the site, all that would have to be done would be change the HTML template, and the entire site changes with it (similar to SSI). SSI, unfortunately, does not seem to work alongside CGI, so we use the above implementation to integrate our own "SSI".

The site currently runs on a dual-core PowerMac G5 2.0 GHz, with 4x 300 GB SATA drives connected in a RAID 10 formation. Performance from the drives is measured at 300 MB/sec sustained.

I have seen major performance increases by testing on Linux for x86, and would enjoy seeing a Darwin CGI engine built natively for Intel/x86. This would allow us to upgrade our servers utilizing the latest Mac Pro Intel Xeon processors.

But alas, this seems to remain on RunRev's low-priority list. The claim that the engine "functions" utilizing Rosetta is a bad compromise, akin to running a Linux server under Virtual PC on an old Macintosh and saying that is efficient.

On another note, we were exclusively a HyperCard-only shop until Runtime Revolution came along. When we started computerizing in 1997, HyperCard was a promising technology. Now defunct, and OS 9 along with it, we are striving to update all of our in-house software to accomodate the transition from HyperCard on OS 9 (using WebStar and LiveCard to publish stacks over the internet) to Runtime Revolution. Our online store, and user account/login mechanism remains with HyperCard for the time being.