Well, my Ratajik.com ISP (CIHOST) finally pissed me off to the point where I’m not going to use them in the future (for that site, or any other). The support there sucks. After looking around a bit, I realized I could get a .NET hosting site pretty easy, and, as I need to learn that for work (and I HATE old ASP/VBScript)….
I’ve moved the entire thing to ASP.NET. Right now, doing C# for the server side. I’ve spent the last couple of days moving things (didn’t take very long). Right now, you can Find and Add a loc, which is what I had running before. The basic architecture is going to remain the same.
I’ve been thinking more about what AE will allow users to do. The original thought was to have it notify the user as they got close to a know Loc. I still plan on doing that, but I might also want to be able to do the more traditional “Show me what’s around here” thing. This will then involve directions to that point (maps, routes, et al) which I *REALLY* don’t want to get into, as that’s an entire other project. I’d like to integrate into existing map software on the various platforms, which I will need to research. If I can do that (have Yahoo’s map site pop up with the route all in place and ready to go, on the PC platform for instance), then it should be fairly viable. The nice thing about just letting them know when they where basically on top of a location was mapping wasn’t really needed (“Umm…. Two steps to your left, and look under the table” *grin*).
Anyway, the decision to use .NET is a big one; one that I hope isn’t going to blow up in my face. While a lot of it it’s like stuff I’ve used before, there’s still going to be a learning curve, which will slow things down. Like, should I just use MSXML DOM stuff to I/O XML from .ASPX files, or should I move to Web Services for that part of it (remote access from applications, e.g., non-web page access). That’s basically a Web Service, so that would make sense… but I need to figure out what type of transport layer requirements I’m going to need. Having to communicate via SOAP from the Palm might (might?) be a problem. Don’t know yet, will need to figure that kind of thing out. The nice thing about straight XML is that most platforms should support it, at least current ones. And for older ones, I may need to go through a conversion service (Client->CustomStreamConverterOnWebSite->XML->Page/WebService).
