Dataface in the longer term

[zopemgr]

Hi Steve,

Great work with Dataface! It's quite a tour de force and I'm looking forward to seeing it grow.

Can you share with us some background info about yourself and Dataface?

How long have you been developing it? Where do you see it going in the longer term? Are there any committers to Dataface besides yourself? What happens to Dataface when you pass your exams and find gainful employment?

Inquiring minds et al...

Mike Stolove

[shannah]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the interest and the comments. To answer a few of the questions:

A bit of background on myself:

I am a mathematics and computing science student at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. I started working with the web around 1998 with PERL and javascript but soon moved to PHP as my tool of choice (for the web at least). I have also been working as web developer/coordinator for the past 3 years in the Faculty of Education and now in the Faculty of Applied Sciences. I have been developing Dataface since about August, but it has been on my mind for much longer than that. The idea spawned while working in the Faculty of Education which uses Filemaker for its Database. I was frustrated that there was nothing as easy to use as Filemaker in the MySQL realm. You may ask: Why not just use filemaker then? I answer: I do. But it is not practical for general purpose development because it is hard to convince people to fork out the thousands of dollars for the software and even more money for hosting. I like to develop with PHP/MySQL because it is everywhere. I can develop an application using PHP/MySQL for anyone and they can get virtually free hosting and run the application.

The common problem I would run into (when designing sites with PHP/MySQL) is that the people for whom I designed them needed to have access to the database to do updates etc.. and I got tired of having to make forms for every site that I did. So I built Dataface.

Where do I see it going in the longer term?:

I want to see just how deep this rabbit hole goes. I feel, at this point, like I am approaching critical mass (as far as PHP applications go). i.e., Dataface is "big" so I have to be careful of both memory and execution time. Eventually I will probably need to integrate it with a java back-end if I want it to be able to serve serious enterprise clients with heavy loads, but I'm still having fun with PHP optimization (caching etc..). Over the next few months I will be working on making Dataface an out-of-the-box solution for data driven applications, in addition to making its individual components and API more usable on their own (so that Dataface could be used as a Library also). The most interesting thing going on with it right now would have to be the internationalization/multilingualization. Using SQL parsing, caching, and a few conventions, I think I've come up with a pretty slick way to make any site multilingual without having to gut its architecture.

Dataface, however, is not a goal unto itself. It is a means for me to be able to create data driven applications fast! And in such a way that they can be modified easily later on. I have already used it on a number of applications, and it has been quite successful at improving stability and reducing complexity. One particular group content management system went from over 27000 lines of code to about 1000 lines of code (not counting the dataface code base) which resulted in much better stability, readability, and expandability.

Are there any committers other than me?

A few people have contacted me offering their support, and a number of people have been very helpful with suggestions and bug reports, but, at this time, I am the only developer. In some ways that is easier (until it gets too big).

What happens when I pass my exams and find gainful employment?

Well, I am quite happy with the job I have now, so you could say that I already have gainful employment. It allows me the flexibility to design cool and occasionally the stuff that I want to develop is the same as the stuff that needs to be developed

Anyways, Thanks for the interest. Hope to keep the dialog going..

[knummela]

>> Well, I am quite happy with the job I have now, so you could say that I already have gainful employment. It allows me the flexibility to design cool and occasionally the stuff that I want to develop is the same as the stuff that needs to be developed

So, as well as being a student at SFU, you are working at SFU and that's what you mean about being gainfully employed? I only ask because our company is planning to move forward full steam ahead with Dataface and I'm hoping that we can count on you being around to develop/support it for a long time to come.

[shannah]

Yes. As well as being a student, I work at SFU as the Web Services Developer in the Faculty of Applied Science. Dataface is the product of about 50% work-time and 50% personal time. If I am developing an application for the faculty that requires new features in Dataface then I can justify spending work time on those features, etc...

Yes. You can count on me supporting Dataface for a long time to come.

Glad to hear that you guys are going full steam ahead with Dataface. Feature requests are always welcome.

Best regards

Steve

[zopemgr]

>> Yes. You can count on me supporting Dataface for a long time to come.

Great. That's what I was hoping to hear.

>> Feature requests are always welcome.

OK. We'll likely have more of these.

[knummela]

>> Yes. You can count on me supporting Dataface for a long time to come.

Great. That's what I was hoping to hear.

>> Feature requests are always welcome.

OK. We'll likely have more of these.