RE: Stripping content from other sites using "socket" connections

Thanks for your response Teddy. 

I'm not going to be bothered to enter into a long debate about the
relative merits of one technology over another, because the most
important cost factor is not the cost of acquiring access to the
software, but in the cost of development.  And that is a function of
many things, not least of which is how adept the developer is at using
it.

However lets get to some of the myths about Cold Fusion, .asp and Flash.

First of all, you have to pay for using ColdFusion.  But you also have
to pay to use all the other technologies.  With PHP and Perl, you don't
have to send money to the copyright owner that's true. They are "open
source".  And at least nominally you can get hold of the software and
install it yourself.

I tried installing PHP.   I didn't get it done inside a couple of hours.
And even then, I had trouble understanding the documentation because
it's written by IT tech-heads for IT Techheads.

ColdFusion I installed on the server remotely after someone else put the
CD on the server.  It took less than 5 minutes and was working
completely afterwards.    Your experience might be different, but I have
heard a lot of people saying their experience was similar to mine.

And you pay down the track for languages that are more difficult to
understand and use.  For example, can you connect to a datasource, make
a query, and disconnect in this space?

<.cfquery name="getdata" datasource="mydata">
SELECT * from Tbltablename where name like '%kear%'
<./cfquery>

And can you make a table and display it all on the screen with something
as small as this?

<.cfdump var="#getdata#">

It's the ease of use, the sheer power of the language and the fact that
you can write your own tags doing anything you like that make it less
expensive than other technologies in the long run.

For example, can you create a drop down list of all the countries in the
UN's list of countries with the country codes as the input variable and
the name as the display with anything less than the following?:

<cf_countries base="usa">

That's a function I wrote myself.  You can see it at work at
http://www.buathletics.com/register/index.cfm    The function goes off
and queries a database of country names and codes, and builds the drop
down list and puts the country named as "base" as the default selection.
It's something I use all the time on most of my forms.

My point is this .... while you pay for the license to the server
technology, either directly or indirectly, you save many more times the
cost of that in the ease of use and rapid deployment of dynamic sites.
This is why you find so many of the commercial sites using .asp and/or
coldfusion.


Other people can easily say the same thing about .asp and php because
its what they know, but I know from my own experience that non-technical
people who understand html can quickly learn ColdFusion but they can't
learn .asp or PHP as easily.  I know because I've had to do it, and I
have been running development teams where we have had exactly that
problem.


And lastly, regarding your accessibility question.  The fact that you're
blind and the pages might or might not be easy to navigate is nothing
whatever to do with the technology. It's to do with the design.  Flash
now has all kinds of accessibility options inbuilt and available as
plugins so there's no reason why a flash element should be unavailable
to your software.  I know because my main client is very conscious about
access for blind users.   We regularly have blind people come into the
office and run our sites for us in usability labs so we can see where we
trip them up.

We can make it easy or difficult for blind people depending on how we
design it.  Nothing whatever to do with the technology.


You shouldn't go knocking something simply because it costs money to
buy.  It's the overall cost of the site that counts, and as I said at
the top of this post, the most significant cost of most sites is the
cost of the developers' expertise, not the technology.   A simple site
built by me using PERL took at least 20 times longer for me than
building a far more complex dynamic site in ColdFusion.  And I'm talking
about when I was a learner at ColdFusion.   Multiply that by any hourly
rate you like and tell me that its cheaper to use the "free" PERL.



Cheers,
Michael Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks.






-----Original Message-----
From: Octavian Rasnita [mailto:orasnita(at)home.ro] 
Sent: Monday, 30 December 2002 4:53 AM
To: mkear(at)afpwebworks.com; hwg-techniques@mail. hwg. org
Subject: Re: Stripping content from other sites using "socket"
connections

Sorry I'm not one-eyed. I am blind and a web page that doesn't refresh
is
not very friendly for a blind because I don't know when the page is
fully
refreshed.

It depends what web pages you want to create. If you want to create web
pages using Flash, Cold Fusion might be very good, but otherwise it is
not
faster or slower than PHP or perl or Asp.
The single problem is that ASP and Cold Fusion are not so much used as
PHP
and Perl.

And Perl, PHP are free while Cold Fusion is not.

It might be free for you, but not for the site owner.

Teddy,
Teddy's Center: http://teddy.fcc.ro/
Email: orasnita(at)home.ro

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Kear" <mkear(at)afpwebworks.com>
To: "hwg-techniques@mail. hwg. org" <hwg-techniques(at)mail.hwg.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2002 2:12 PM
Subject: RE: Stripping content from other sites using "socket"
connections


The point of Flash Remoting is that only the tiny window gets refreshed
when you hit 'submit', not the whole page.  So you reduce traffic, you
reduce bandwidth, and you make the page run smoother and quicker.

An example I have seen is an electronics manufacturer.  When you get to
the shopping cart, you select the broad category of appliance you're
looking for (say tvs) and when you get this kind of gizmo thing, you
click the dial on the gizmo and it turns, changing the content in the
screen.  You get the pictures of the tvs available, along with the
details of the tv.  And its only the contents of this screen that are
being sent and received. The rest of the page remains and is not
refreshed.  All the product description pricing and images etc come from
the database that's being used by the rest of the company for inventory,
accounting, warehouse management etc.   If you can't see that as a
benefit, then you're more one-eyed than I thought.


As to the proprietary thing... almost all dynamic sites are built on one
or another proprietary technology. It's futile to try to debate it.  You
can get all in a twist about licensing, but I haven't paid any license
fees.  I have 20 ColdFusion sites.  My hosting provider has paid
licensing, but my sites come out cheaper and faster - in 10th of the
time it took me to do simple tasks using perl, and FAR more dynamic and
easy to modify when the need arises.    When it comes down to it, my
sites are far cheaper even allowing for my share of the ColdFusion
licensing than the sites I used CGI on.


But you go ahead and stick with whatever technology you use now.  That's
fine. As long as the end result is up with what the world is doing.  Who
cares what technology you use, as long as it's competitive when you add
in your development costs and it can do the jobs the site owners want.


I am not going to enter into any further discussion about whether perl
is better than php is better than asp is better than cold fusion.    I
have more interesting ways to spend my time.


Cheers,
Michael Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks.





-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org [mailto:owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org]
On Behalf Of Frank Boumphrey
Sent: Sunday, 29 December 2002 3:36 PM
To: Octavian Rasnita; hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
Subject: Re: Stripping content from other sites using "socket"
connections

Both php and perl (but not AFIK asp) allow you to grab a remote file
(it's
almost trivial with php). If this remote file is set up as an XML web
service then you can easily parse it's content and get every thing you
want.

Maybe it's easier to do with a proprietary solution such as flash and
macromedia but then you will have to pay those hefty license fees, AND
you
web apps be held hostage  to  the whims of a  corporation (rumor has it
that
M$ is eying flash, doesn't that send fingers of fear down your spine!).
So
much better to use the open source solution.

Frank
----- Original Message -----
From: "Octavian Rasnita" <orasnita(at)home.ro>
To: <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 28, 2002 1:11 PM
Subject: Re: Stripping content from other sites using "socket"
connections


> Wouldn't be more simple and powerfull to use a CGI script instead?
>
> Teddy,
> Teddy's Center: http://teddy.fcc.ro/
> Email: orasnita(at)home.ro
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Kear" <mkear(at)afpwebworks.com>
> To: "'Mike Taylor'" <lonewolf(at)one.net>; <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
> Sent: Saturday, December 28, 2002 4:44 PM
> Subject: RE: Stripping content from other sites using "socket"
connections
>
>
> It's a major feature of Macromedia's new MX series of products,
> specifically FlashMX and ColdFusionMX.   Together they have a feature
> called Flash Remoting.  It's specifically designed to simplify
> Syndication of Content (which is the web buzzword for this kind of
> thing) so people who have information can set up a web service with up
> to date data stored on their own databases, and make it available to
all
> kinds of web sites on all manner of financial arrangements - free or
> otherwise.
>
> On the site using the info, all they do is set up a Flash component
and
> the only part of the page that changes as the data changes or as
people
> enter information in the forms is the small window inside the flash.
>
> For example .. suppose you have a travel site, because you're a travel
> agent.  One thing you might want to have is a little block on the side
> of your page with the current exchange rates.   You make a Flash image
> that consists of a little form where users click the currencies
they're
> interested in, and a button, and in the back of the flash component of
> your page, you have set up a link to a web service run by a financial
> institution.   When the user clicks the button on the small form, it
> doesn't refresh the whole page - ONLY the small part containing the
> currency information in the flash component.   It's Flash Remoting
> that's connecting to the financial institution and grabbing the data,
> then reformatting it how you want it displayed.  You control how it
> looks, but the data comes from the institution.   On this hypothetical
> travel site, you might also have Flash Remoting getting room rates,
> booking information,  airline schedules etc all from different
> information providers, who have set up these web services.
>
> It's been done before in one way or another, but it's going to be a
HUGE
> development in the future as more and more people set up web services
> and make their information available to other sites, to get revenue
from
> their information, or to get more exposure to their data by having it
on
> zillions of sites.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Michael Kear
> Windsor, NSW, Australia
> AFP Webworks.
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
[mailto:owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org]
> On Behalf Of Mike Taylor
> Sent: Friday, 13 December 2002 2:43 AM
> To: hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
> Subject: Re: Stripping content from other sites using "socket"
> connections
>
> ---------  Original message --------
> From: Hank Marquardt <hmarq(at)yerpso.net>
>
> > So, now that I showed you 'how' -- a couple pitfalls/problems:
> >You could be violating the TOS of the site doing this; this is
> >particularly a problem if you integrate stuff below the link level
>
> Hank,
>
> Thanks for the examples, as well as the rest who have offered their
own
> links.
>
> I'd like to clarify that, for the record, the site I referenced in my
> first
> message was legally pulling data from the third-party site.
>
> As for ASP alternatives, I can only think of a couple COM components
> that
> accomplish this like ASPTear, ASPHttp and the Microsoft's XMLHTTP
> object.
> I've just never seen the inner workings of these objects and wanted to
> know
> how it all worked.  I've heard about querying the host via a socket
> connection, but never knew the specifics to make it happen.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Mike
>
>
>

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