Relational Database and Flash

[ChouChou]

Dear Forum,

first an intro: I was very suprised to find a forum exactly on my topic, Filemaker and Flash. Great ! I've been working on Flash file to present some data about a library, documented in Filemaker. Given the XML output by Filemaker, via HTTP request, I've imported the XML data and presented it in Flash via Actionscript 2.0, with the use of the XML- and XMLNode-Class. So nothing is done via the (data) components. The first step of my development was to make a general 'XMLBrowser' is Flash. It is available at http://prbieb.fee.uva.nl/Sjoerd/XMLBrowser. If you find this piece of code useful, let me know, I can post the .fla (Flash) file. All is object oriented programmed.

Now my question, the file/database I used up to now is like a flat database, no relations. I've made a new architecture of database, which involves several files and relations. What would you, as forum member, consider the best way to feed this to a Flash movie ?

I had some ideas, like using the ScriptMaker of FileMaker to generate 1 big 'join'-file presenting the data in a very old-fashion way. Also, I could import all databases/files in seperate XML-objects and create custom Flash relations between the XML-objects to mimic the FM relations. Both solutions hard work.

ChouChou

[ChouChou]

nobody ? somebody must have feed flash a relational database ....

[Gary Weisbrodt]

Check out

http://actionscript-toolbox.com/samplephpmysql.php

[Guest]

Thanks for the link, I will print and read it for sure.

In this article, the author uses middleware (PHP) to be an interface between a database and flash. Given FMPro, middleware is hard to use, given its ODBC API(this is an API right ? i'm kind of a newbie in that sense). So what I want is a solution without middleware at all, using XML technologie by which I (only) present the data in Flash,

ChouChou

[Gary Weisbrodt]

You can also look at this

http://ghostwire.com/go/28

Yes ... you may want to consider something like mySql

[ChouChou]

Thanks for your reply,

ChouChou

[Garry Claridge]

The data/XML being returned to Flash will be the result of a query. Hence, the relational format will depend on that query. I assume that you could consider it being formatted like a "view" table.

All the best.

Garry

[ChouChou]

Isnt there a standard XML exort/format available to represent all related data ?

I'm am wondering, because a relational database can easily be represented in XML, so it could be that FileMaker has included this format as an XML export.

Anyhow, Gary thanks for your reaction, it's appreciated, I will take that into account.

Furthermore, I've done some crossposting. I know it isnt that pc, but I wanted to reach as many people as possible. Here is my other posts:

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=131088&an=0&page=0#131088

and

http://www.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?postid=3104641

ChouChou

[Garry Claridge]

I guess we are talking about different things here

You seem to be talking about Exporting the database as an XML file, then have Flash access that.

The method I thought you were asking about is Flash sending dynamic queries to the database and it responding with the resulting data. This resulting data would often appear "flat", the database should have pulled the related data and incorporated it into the result.

All the best.

Garry

[ChouChou]

I guess we are talking about different things here

You seem to be talking about Exporting the database as an XML file, then have Flash access that.

The method I thought you were asking about is Flash sending dynamic queries to the database and it responding with the resulting data. This resulting data would often appear "flat", the database should have pulled the related data and incorporated it into the result.

It's a bit of both I guess. I want to query the data via http request in Flash, so that would be dynamically, but was wondering about standard methods to show related records in XML.

So I guess what I need to do is to query the database in the right way, so the related records are included in XML. Gonna dig into how the properly query the relational database. I'm a newbie on that subject,

ChouChou

[Tusif Ahmad]

I am interested to put flash object on layout. Can any body help me in doing this....

Regards,

Tusif

[ChouChou]

Hey Forum,

I just wanted to let you know that I've come with a solution to my FileMakerPro-XML-Flash thingie. With the use of XPath (external class XPathDocument @ http://www.xfactorstudio.com/Actionscript/AS2/XPath/ ), i've been query-ing the database via http-requests en used the returned XML to present my data to Flash. So, not the whole of the database is exported to XML, but I just search for the data I need at that time. Which is like back-end programming (I hope).

So Flash/AS doesnt do any hard work, searching the data, which is good, but it does need the work with the data and make-up extra queries to get the right data, which isnt that elegant. An example. I want to get relational data out of another file. First I need make a query from client to server to to get the data from the join-file. Then I get the data of the join-file from server to client. At client side I need to get the actual data from another file, given the ID's in the join-file, so I make another query from client to server and then I get the data I want from server to client again. So allot of quering and http traffic going on, which could make the application slow, which I need to test.

Furthermore, the script has to wait a lot of times to get the XML data and only proceed when the data is in, this makes up for some extra programming and not so elegant solutions.

ChouChou

[Livi]

Anyone who can post an example flash file and Filemaker database, so we can see how this actually works ? Very interested to see it !

Livi

[blooobell]

I would also be very interested. I am wondering why SQL is not being considered? Which version of Flash are you working with? I believe Flash MX 2004 Professional works well with SQL. This is an area I would LOVE to work in and was so excited to find this conversation. I have a feeling there may be a lot of us out there.

Looking forward to watching this post grow,

Leslie