The current Classifieds used on the Scothorse is now 8 years old, apart from a few modifications and debugging, it has remained unchanged since around 2001.
A new program which eliminates the current slow, un-potimised and not very modular architecture must be re-designed. Given that the program is old and bloated, the only viable solution is to design it from scratch, as it was written when I was still getting familliar with Perl and you don’t want to see the code!
The current classifieds was born as a system using a “flat” database (a file) and got subsequently moved into a MySQL database, this led to die hard bad habits which do not work in a Database environment.
During the next few months, I hope to be able to create that new program and, if I have time, I will try to comment as much as possible about the project on this Blog.
I will obviously not reveal the complete code (but I may) but I need to keep an history of how it started, bloggin’ is good for that. 😛
As per the current line of thinking the program shall use:
- Perl as the main application management layer
- MySQl as the database layer
- XML
- XSL
- AJAX
Ajax is interesting, however it seems that it is just some Javascript calling server snippets without having to reload the whole page. I quite like that, saves bandwitdh (although I currently have enough reserve (100G/mo used in a 1T allowance, room for growth)
Aim
Enable the system to use Web 2.0 Features fully.
Am I nuts?
Why would I want to write a program that is very likely to available on the web for a few quids (or bucks for our US friends) like this one? Well, I need to get to grip with XML as I have big plans and this could make us quite confortable for a good few years. I know some will say, you don’t have time! I know, that is even more why I want to do it. I need to be busy and long projects like that are perfect.
I give myself 6 to 8 months to get this done, making it ready for Spring 2010, history will tell if I managed to achieve it. (I didn’t do 100% yet as of Dec 2011)
Now I am gooing to think about the architecture with a mindmap…