Kingsley Idehen's Blog Data Space

Contd: Ajax Database Connectivity Demos

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 02:48:00 GMT

Last week I put out a series of screencast style demos that sought to demonstrate the core elements of our soon to be released Javascript Toolkit called OAT (OpenLink Ajax Toolkit) and its Ajax Database Connectivity layer.

The screencasts covered the following functionality realms:

To bring additional clarity to the screencasts demos and OAT in general, I have saved a number of documents that are the by products of activities in the screenvcasts:

Live XML Document produced using SQL Query By Example (basic) (you can use drag and drop columns across the grid to reorder and sort presentation)
Live XML Document produced using QBE and Pivot Functionality (you can drag and drop the aggregate columns and rows to create your own views etc..)
Basic database driven map based mashup (works with FireFox, Webkit, Camino; click on pins to see national flag)
Advanced database driven map based mashup (works with FireFox, Webkit, Camino; records, 36, 87, and 257 will unveil pivots via lookup pin)

Notes:

âAdvancedâ, as used above, simply means that I am embedding images (employee photos and national flags) and a database driven pivot into the map pins that serve as details lookups in classic SQL master/details type scenarios.
The âAjax Call In Progress..â dialog is there to show live interaction with a remote database (in this case Virtuoso but this could be any ODBC, JDBC, OLEDB, ADO.NET, or XMLA accessible data source)
The data access magic source (if you want to call it that) is XMLA - a standard that has been in place for years but completely misunderstood and as a result under utilized

You can see a full collection of saved documents at the following locations:

My Mashups demo directory (Google and Yahoo! demo variants but note these do not work with Safari or IE at the current time. IE7 issues will be resolved in the next day or so)
My Pivots demo directory (other Pivots will be added as I build and save them)
My Saved Queries (a collection of saved QBE generated queries)

Building Pivot Tables using Ajax Database Connectivity

Fri, 26 May 2006 22:08:00 GMT

This screencast demo (enclosure attached) is a continuation from my earlier Ajax and QBE screencast demo. This time the focus is on building Excel like Pivot tables using data exposed via Ajax Database Connectivity.

Screencast: Ajax Database Connectivity and SQL Query By Example

Fri, 26 May 2006 21:59:00 GMT

AJAX Database Connectivity is the Data Access Component of OAT (OpenLink AJAX Toolkit). It's basically an XML for Analysis (XMLA) client that enables the development and deployment of database independent Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Thus, you can now develop database centric AJAX applications without lock-in at the Operating System, Database Connectivity mechanism (ODBC, JDBC, OLEDB, ADO.NET), or back-end Database levels.

XMLA has been around for a long time. Its fundamental goal was to provide Web Applications with Tabular and Multi-dimensional data access before it fell off the radar (a story too long to tell in this post).

AJAX Database connectivity only requires your target DBMS to be XMLA (direct), ODBC, JDBC, OLEDB, or ADO.NET accessible.

I have attached a Query By Example (QBE) screencast movie enclosure to this post (should you be reading this post Web 1.0 style). The demo shows how Paradox-, Quattro Pro-, Access-, and MS Query-like user friendly querying is achieved using AJAX Database Connect Connectivity