That’s right I’ve dusted it off and I am actually wearing my roving reporter hat on again. This time I’m reporting from beautiful Orlando Florida which is host to the FileMaker Developer’s Conference 2006. It’s been many a year since I’ve been to the “House of Mouse” and boy has it changed! (For those who don’t know, I met the lovely and talented Kathy while working at Walt Disney World.)
For those of you wondering why I’m at FileMaker DevCon 2006, it’s because FileMaker recently rolled out the beta of the FileMaker/PHP API. A cool piece of code developed in conjunction with Zend. (You know, the guys that pay the bills here at DevZone!) It allows FileMaker developers to read and write data natively from within PHP scripts. One of the things I’m doing this week getting a feel for how the FileMaker community feels about PHP and what problems they are trying to solve with it. I wasn’t actually sure what to expect. What I found was a really friendly group of 1,200+ developers, a lot of whom are very interested in PHP.
I talked with people like John Mathison. His company is currently deploying PHP but are looking to increase their use of it and build their own internal PHP team. One of the things he’s here for this week is to research the new API. John and his company build web sites for the advertising industry and want to use FileMaker as the database backend for them. Currently they use FileMaker to input and QC the data and then send it to MySQL for publishing on the web. The new API would allow them to cut out the MySQL step and publish straight from the FileMaker database.
I also was privileged to met Diana Jones-Harrellson and James Kirkpatrick. They are part of an internal IT department that builds workgroup applications for their department. They are investigating how PHP can help them save money on their servers by not having to license Lasso each Year. Diana has some work with PHP and MySQL before and is the programmer leading the investigation. James, her manager had this to say about PHP.
PHP is more readily accepted by our IT group verses Lasso. They don’t understand lasso at all and are not interested in it. They have accepted PHP as a standard though so that’s another reason we are looking into it.
All of these people, including Holden Smith and the two other gentlemen I had dinner with all were cautiously optimistic that PHP would help them in their development practices.
I arrived late today but I did get a chance to attend 2 sessions. First was Paul Chen’s :An Inside Look at Using PHP with FileMaker”. A short but informative session in which Paul dissected the sample application that comes with the API and discussed what it takes to develop your own. He then spent the rest of the time fielding questions from the audience.
The other session I attended was Lance Hallberg’s “10 Steps to Building a Content Management System using FileMaker 8.5 and PHP”. lance did an impressive demo of creating a CMS with FileMaker as the backend and using PHP to display the data on the web. I hope he publishes the slides on this one because it was not only an interesting demo, it was one of the few sessions I’ve seen at any conference where the demo was not contrived. (Hint to those attending, don’t expect the same from me, mine demo is contrived.)
Finally, the great people at Waves in Motion threw a welcome reception in the Exhibit Hall. Lots of GREAT food and some great wine. (What’s a tech conference without adult beverages?) I had fun wandering around and talking to the vendors. I got to meet Stephen Knight of FMWebSchool and their Chief Developer, Allyson Olm. As I was walking out of the reception, I met Paul Mitchell of Soliant Consulting. Paul was the only one at the conference wearing a kilt. (which you might think would be weird at a tech conference but Paul pulls it off great.) Unlike mine, his kilt is not a costume, it’s the real thing and the pattern is that of his grandmother’s clan. I respect a man who will wear a kilt in public. (Costume parties don’t count)
More tomorrow. Until then keep an eye on the entire Flickr Group.
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Comments
-Lurker
-Kiyu
Kiyu and I agreed that every job has a tool that is better suited for it. You don't change sparkplugs with a crescent wrench or use a butter knife on flat head screws. As a lasso developer I'm perfectly happy using wordpress to host my blog because I can use ecto OR filemaker to edit it. I can't and don't want to rewrite a blogging software in lasso when there's something perfectly good out there already.
The leap most people never take is delving far enough in the community to find the resources to make their job easier. Sites like http://www.tagswap.net, http://www.lassoscripts.com, http://www.lassobin.com, http://www.lassoforge.net and http://www.listsearch.com all contain years and years worth of archived lasso code, tips of the week, sample and free applications. Downloading open source lasso code like groupworld from lassoforge or the LJAX samples that show how to use the prototype framework with built in lasso tags make learning the language as easy as possible. There are also several lasso frameworks available such as fusebox for lasso, corral, and pageblocks.
I will concede that in a commercial environment the ability to find replacement employees with a skillset that is readily available is an important issue. Lasso coders are at a premium, we are not always available but are everywhere. Just go to monster.com com and do a search on .lasso and you will see what I'm talking about. There's a high number of high profile lasso sites emerging with customers that range from NASA to the UN, and almost every major university.
Just like PHP has applications written for it like OS Commerce Lasso has complete solutions developed on it like HostedStore - which omnipilot uses to sell lasso- , one of the most robust and customizable ecommerce applications shipping today.
Lasso's 10 year history of connectivity with FileMaker makes it the strongest choice to connect to FileMaker and I would bet that, "you wont see an API for Lasso in any version of FileMaker thats coming out soon"
Thanks everyone for this graet API.
Also there is lasso studio for GoLive, Dreamweaver, and the Eclipse IDE. These combined with a full Lasso license are priced competitively with Zend studio and Zend engine. For individual developers that use a hosting provider, there is no cost to use lasso other than the hosting fee.
Sunny Nashville Salutations brianloomis,
I was asked not to mention the name of the company that Diane and James work for so you will have to trust me that if you live in the US, it is a household name. It does not surprise me at all that their applications are larger than 5 user and thus would require licensing.
Second, Zend Engine is available to anyone and everyone, on all supported platforms, without cost or restriction. Details can be found here and it can be downloaded here. Most “hosted” accounts comes with the Zend Engine already installed but you can always check with the phpinfo() to make sure.
I am in no way casting dispersions on Lasso, a technology that has been around for a while and is tried and true. Your pricing comparison however, may have led some to believe that both Zend Studio and Zend Engine have a price tag associated with them. I just didn’t want there to be any misconceptions.
Thanks for the comments!
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Every tool has its place. for me the decision ot add PHP to my toolbox has as lot to do with ZEND and the open source community. I see it as the direction my biggest customers are moving in as well as some large customers whom I have not been successful in winning contracts with.
I have 7 years invested in Witango and I expect ot continue ot use it. It has by far the best IED arround. That said Zend Studio runs a close second, and it is jsut good businnes IMHO to ahve at least two tools at least one Open source at this point in time.
To clarify, Cal is correct in stating we have a large operation here with several (thousand) connections on any given day. I've been a Lasso developer here for the past 4 and a half years and I don't plan on up and leaving it any time soon. However, we do plan on integrating php solutions along side our current Lasso solutions as soon as the API becomes finalized.