fP, RSS, and near-realtime synchronisation potential

[GCC Consulting]

> 
> Only one paragraph of brief background...then the fP-centric 
> stuff starts.
> 
> 
> I got to thinking about fP web clusters with secure, 
> firewalled centralized fP data servers, and "transactional" 
> fP servers on the public side that may comprise a whole 
> cluster of load-balanced servers that may not have all the 
> data at once at any given point.  I've dealt with this on 
> numerous occasions.  Let me make it clear right now that 
> web-based scenarios are
> -not- the only ones that I believe can benefit from this; 
> although the technology to make it work requires web servers, 
> they could be private ones, and any applications in question 
> need not be public "web enabled"
> projects.  This has a potential bearing on any multi-server 
> environment.
> I'm simply going to explain it in terms of how it would work 
> for a scenario that I've dealt with repeatedly, but the 
> application is not limited to that scenario by any means.
> 
> I'm thinking that if you have multiple machines--let us say 
> public web servers whose data changes--connected to a private 
> machine which is a central data clearing house, a secured RSS 
> feed may very well be a good potential mechanism for 
> publishing the data obtained on web servers back to the main 
> server.  You only need something like wget, curl, or even 
> lynx to get the RSS data, and some processing to parse the 
> feed and do what you would with it.  RSS feeds being 
> inherently XML, they lend themselves readily to what some of 
> us are already doing as far as importing data into filePro 
> from XML, not to mention the presumed forthcoming built-in 
> XML functionality of fP.

The problem to making this work is the new licensing scheme.  It will reuire a
separate licensed version on each server unless its just data on the servers.
If the binaries are on each machine, separate license.

Richard Kreiss
GCC Consulting