Slow down a bit BB,
You are misunderstanding something here.
I leave out the html part because that is a different matter which
you can have out with don!
It is the database part you do not understand. The user need not know
anything of the database to extract, use, and save files, in what ever format!
You see the database is first and firmly just a filing system for the files!
Just like the OS is!
Whether you believe me or not there were OSs (please do not which, it has be a long time)
that uses a database of organizing the files and their usage.
A file system is in a practical sense, is nothing else, but a database. That is when you say "open XYZ"
the file system does to a file/table finds the file name XYZ, finds where it is store on the storage device,
goes there and gets it(o.k just a data structure) and gives it to the the program that is suppose to open it.
Which, by the way is also, looked up in some kind of table/file, depending on you OS.
So you can see you are surrounded by databases. Agreed, they may not be called databases, but it is the
same principle!
So, if don wants to use a database (system) as a file(filing) system what is wrong with that.
Besides, do you KNOW the intrinsics of the OSs or file systems of all the servers that you use.
Do you send them Unix, Windows, Apple, etc commands to access the files you need.
No!, you use some program, script that goes and get them for you.
Or, does it matter to YOU if the web server you are accessing use a content management system
(by the way they are database based). The simple answer is NO!. Why? Because you simply do not see
that it is there! You browser does not care either! You do need to know anything about it at all.
But, the people administering the site know it is there and glad they have it.
Basically, Don will have a front end to his database, that will give you all you need and it will be just as easy
(probably easier) than using your script based system. On the other side I would have to learn how to use
your scripts and how to find them, how to reprogram them to work for a particular book or text!
I hope you can see that it does not matter that the details of how a file is saved is obscured. What is important is that
the use of the file is transparent, just the your OS obscures the details of how it work, yet you have a simple interface
to your files. To quote Steve Jobs: "It just works!"
regards
Keith.
don said:
> Slow down
let me come back to that...
> read the *second* sentence.
i did read it. i wasn't impressed.
> It's pure html in the mysql database.
precisely. that's my objection.
and i stated it, as such, quite clearly, when i said:
> so on top of the obfuscation of the text by the .html,
> it's now buried inside of a mysql database, meaning
> that anyone who wants to understand the system well
> needs to acquire an additional hairy set of experience.
in other words, you take clean text and
gunk it up with .html, and then you also
bury that gunked-up text in a database.
and you want us to think that is a good system?