Why I like SQL and a matter of AS Dysfunction

One of the little projects I an engaged in at the moment is quite a nice little program to store facts, its the latest chapter in the drive to put information traditionally stored in a managers spreadsheet horde onto a central system which anybody can access.

The program is very simple, a set of pubs and a set of facts but one aspect which was quite intriguing was how to efficiently add an address for an entry without ending up with a huge database of contact details which would require constant maintenance, we have enough of those already! In due course a solution presented itself, why not simply use one of those other databases and what better than the accounts system because frankly businesses like to get paid and if there is one set of contact details which they make sure to get updated if anything changes its accounts. And this is why I like SQL, the new 'fact' system is in MySQL the accounts system in Microsoft SQL but thanks to the gift of SQL and PHP all of this information can be glued together in a really elegant little system.

The next step with this program is to then load this contact information into a VCard, we may be writing lots of our own software but you have to have an eye on standards and for contact information the VCard is it. Thankfully a nice group of people have written a PHP addon for creating VCards via the PEAR system and if you know what I am talking about and fancy a laugh pop into the documentation section for the VCard PEAR module :o) I'll tell you how I get on with this part tomorrow.

One other little note for today was a confusing feature of the asfunction in Flash, if you are ever programming in Flash and cannot get a function to work using asfunction check the target level, it does not reference the root level but whichever level the text area is in which is calling it. Bet you'll all sleep better now :o)