What We Really Mean by 'Flexibility'

By David Cummings

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 4:26pm

One of the most exciting things about working with clients is when we find out that someone is using our product in ways we never expected. Last month I attended the Gilbane Conference in San Francisco and sat in on a presentation by Dave Dumas from FileMaker, Inc. FileMaker is exciting because they are doing something we haven’t seen before – using Cascade Server to produce JSON objects (JavaScript Object Notation).

JSON has really become popular because of the advent of AJAX on websites. Although it can’t replace XML in most cases, there are some scenarios in which it just works a whole lot better. Since XML is self-describing, XML files have to be very verbose. JSON, on the other hand, is a very concise format because it’s purely data – typically in a multi-dimensional array or grid, and that makes it a lot faster.

Because a JSON document is just a data set in a grid, you have to know what the column in the grid means, or you don’t know what the data means. What FileMaker is doing is using Cascade Server to manage content that’s published to JSON, and then using JavaScript that reads the JSON and populates the content on the website. Although they still use traditional HTML on the site as well for SEO purposes, using JSON (and AJAX) for certain content makes the FileMaker website extremely responsive because the whole page doesn’t need to be refreshed for every action.

We’re really pleased with what FileMaker has been able to accomplish with the CMS. Because it’s such a flexible system, Cascade Server can be used to meet all kinds of website requirements. If anyone is interested in learning more about how our CMS integrates with various technologies, please contact us. Or, if you’re a current client using Cascade Server in a unique way, we want to hear about that too.

What We Really Mean by 'Flexibility'

By David Cummings

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 4:26pm

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