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Intranet Application [message #420] Thu, 23 November 2006 16:49 Go to next message
Kiple is currently offline  Kiple
Messages: 5
Registered: November 2006
Location: Surrey, UK
Junior Member
Hi,

I've been following this framework development for a while now and have found a project that should let me get my teeth into it. I've got to put together a proposal to pull a number of ad-hoc databases and spreadsheet together into an intranet. The business object, transaction patterns and workflow of radicore should be a good solution for this. But I hit a few minor issues that I have ways round but I'm open to suggestions.

The key issue is that the intranet also has to display more general HTML content perhaps without login. So my view on the challenges

a) We want a two column look for the site. That means that the .xsl files need to be changed for all the transaction patterns. Since you can't dynamically include xls based upon an XML node, I rearrange each transaction pattern xsl to be a template called component and include a single "layout.xls" that implement the root transformation. This lets me put the radicore output in any div on the page.

b) We need a content business object that can hold HTML in its fields. There would a problem passing the HTML thru XML and XSL processes. I could add another subtype to string columns in 'dict' of HTML, and use a create_cdata_section and disable-output-escaping to get it thru XML & XSL.

c) The access controls based upon roles and mnu_task are a little too fine grained for a content object. Potientially there will be lots of mnu_tasks pointing at different content objects to go in the menu. I was going to exterd the "role-task" of the access control to "role-task-access". Allowing the setup of permission like "guests" can "view" "public" level content, "editors" can "edit" "public" content and view editor content. Two more tables and a new transaction pattern.I think.

d) Finally the one I'm finding the hardest, creating a Guest user that is automatically logged in. I am working in init_session. I can force new session to be user=guest role=public but I am concerned that I can't set up correct task history into the session to stop it redirectly to a login screen.

Any advice very gratfully recieved Wink

Regards

Kiple
Re: Intranet Application [message #422 is a reply to message #420] Thu, 23 November 2006 17:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
AJM is currently offline  AJM
Messages: 2347
Registered: April 2006
Location: Surrey, UK
Senior Member
The whole idea behind Radicore is that it is a toolkit for building administrative web applications which have limited and controlled access, not general purpose web sites which are open to anybody.

It is possible to have an 'open' web site which accesses a database which is administered by a 'closed' application which has been built by Radicore. This means having a separate set of components which use a completely different presentation layer, but which share the business and data access layers within the Radicore application. Several people have commented that XSL transformations are not very efficient for high usage web sites, and you may also experience problems with trying to pass HTML as content within an XML document. By using different software for the presentation layer you will bypass any such issues. You can then implement whatever security features you desire, and construct HTML screens without being limited to what XML and XSL can do.

I have used this approach on two different applications - using Radicore to build the 'back office' software, but using non-Radicore software for the 'front office' (i.e. open to anyone) part.

Instead of trying to bend Radicore to do something for which it was not designed it is far better to bypass it completely. If you try to bend Radicore you will run the risk of breaking it.



Re: Intranet Application [message #2235 is a reply to message #422] Tue, 04 August 2009 05:04 Go to previous message
AJM is currently offline  AJM
Messages: 2347
Registered: April 2006
Location: Surrey, UK
Senior Member
Take a look at Using Radicore components in a front-end website if you wish to build an application/website which uses the Radicore database components but which has a different front end, thus avoiding the login process and the security checks.

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