Advice needed - cohabitating with a desktop program

[jr@omnipotent.com.au]

I have a project which is going to be a complex desktop application doing things that would just be too hard for me to achieve with Fabrik. This program will use a sql database, and that could be MySql.

I'll need a web interface for listing records, drilling down and ordering products. I know I can do all of that with Fabrik, but the tables and data in the db will be very largely maintained by the desktop program, with the website mostly doing read only operations.

How to achieve this?

• Do I use Fabrik and create forms and elements to line up with the existing tables in the db? I'd have do modify the Fabrik records to achieve this and that's ok, but maybe there could be other dangers? (eg Fabrik modifying the table structure when I don't want it to)
• I could write some web services for the interface, which I really like the idea of, but I'm not sure if Fabrik can be useful then?

Any suggestions or ideas most welcome

 

[cheesegrits]

You can choose existing tables when creating new Fabrik Lists. As soon as the list is created, you can then set the 'Alter existing field types' to No, and Fabrik will never alter the table structure.

-- hugh

 

[jr@omnipotent.com.au]

Cool, I didn't know about that one, thanks Hugh.

 

[rob]

one gotcha I can think of is to ensure that the db user has rights to connect to the database from an IP address. Most often users are limited to connecting from localhost.