Re: netWindow - PHP data transfer model

It is hard to say without knowing your application requirements, user 
platforms, and
developer skills, but I think a working application could be made with 
this architecture.
I don't think there is any redundancy with netwindows.

Some comments that may or may not be applicable:

- I'm not sure xmlrpc buys you anything. It requires the javascript side 
to encode requests
into xml, and decode responses from xml. Also (and this is important), 
it undermines
the ability to test your data server with a browser by typing things 
into the address bar.
Whatever your server layer is that does xml-rpc, could just as well do REST:
decode a url to make a request, and then send a response in an 
appropriate format.
In this architecture, a more efficient response format than XML would be 
javascript
text that could be directly eval'd. (That is, you'd have a nested array 
[] and hash {}
data structure).

- in general, testability is fundamentally important in any architecture.
You'll want your client-server protocol testable by static urls in a 
browser address
bar and/or a command-line http GET utility.
You'll also want your data layer (PEAR::Tree) on the server side to 
support command-line testing.

- that particular xml rpc javascript library is GPL.  A more loosely 
licensed one is
http://scottandrew.com/xml-rpc/

- just because PEAR::Tree gives you storage abstraction does not mean you
want to try to take advantage of all the alternatives at once. I would 
not try
to have a system that relied both on persistent xml files and on a sql 
database
unless for some reason it is absolutely necessary. Because of the need for
query-style reports and understandable indexing behavior, a real sql 
database
is probably preferable. You might in some cases want to store free-form xml
as opaque strings in the sql database, if they cannot be subjected to a 
strict
schema. Not knowing anything about your needs, I'd consider not using 
persistent
xml files nor mysql, but use postgres.

- don't forget about UI design! if users can't make sense of it, all the 
work is for nothing.

-mda



_______________________________________________
The netWindows developers list: [email protected]
http://netwindows.org/mailman/listinfo/devel_netwindows.org