Installation guide

FlashCONNECT Application Types
FlashCONNECT Administrator’s Guide 13
FlashCONNECT Application Types
There are two types of applications that can be built with FlashCONNECT:
• static (also referred to as inactive)
• dynamic (also referred to as active)
The table at the end of this topic provides comparisons.
Static
A FlashCONNECT application that builds static Web pages does so without processing
input from the user. When static Web pages are built from a rarely changing set of
data, static FlashCONNECT applications are the best choice.
For example, a static application might generate a catalog of products being sold.
Since there is no need for user input, these pages are the least taxing on the
underlying operating system and database, and the Web site can be updated from
the database during low activity periods.
Dynamic
A dynamic application generates Web pages containing information from a database
from a user interaction. A dynamic application may require persistent resources.
Persistence is the capability for resources to remain allocated, and information to
remain available to a specific application while Web pages are processed. These
resources and information make up the state of the application and fall into two
categories:
• Persistent data—memory, common and BASIC application, and variables
• Persistent connections—peripheral devices, record locks, and item locks
This type of use shows the strengths of FlashCONNECT dynamic applications.
FlashCONNECT, not the BASIC programmer, keeps track of the state of Web pages.
From the programmer’s point of view, dynamic applications look very much like