Re: [eXist-TEIXML] greetings! eXist and web servers

[Elisa Beshero-B. <eb...@pi...>]

Dear Adam (cc: exist-teixml list):

Many thanks for your detailed responses to my questions!  I've been storing
queries in eXist, and just haven't worked out how to invoke them--so that
looks like my next step. You asked if I want users to input their own query
scripts, and the answer is, not really --because my students have their own
Sandbox installation where they practice and learn XQuery--so this isn't a
web interface for them. Rather, as you conjectured, I just need users to
call particular scripts I'll have saved.

I'm interested in invoking the scripts directly, if I don't have to use
PHP. And I may be back with more questions about all this as I experiment.
(By the way, I purchased your book and I'm sure I'll be consulting it
frequently!)

Best,

Elisa

-- 
Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD
Associate Professor of English
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg
Humanities Division
150 Finoli Drive
Greensburg, PA  15601  USA
E-mail: eb...@pi...
about.me/ebbondar

On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 8:48 PM, Adam Retter <ad...@ex...> wrote:

> Hi Elisa,
>
> Welcome to eXist :-) You can find my comments inline below:
>
> > I'm working on multiple projects that rely in some way on eXist and
> XQuery, and I'm currently > teaching an XQuery unit in my coding-based
> Digital Humanities at Pitt-Greensburg. My
> > course materials are posted here (and I'm grateful for suggestions and
> advice on them!):
> > http://www.pitt.edu/~ebb8/DHDS/
>
> Very cool :-) I am afraid that I do not have a great deal of time to
> look through all of that, but if you want comparison material for
> teaching XQuery and eXist, then I have quite a lot available on my
> site from various courses I have taught to students:
> http://www.adamretter.org.uk/presentations.xml
>
> > What I need to learn at this point is how best to work with eXist to
> develop
> > search queries (rather than simply to use it as I've been, which is to
> run
> > queries to check for consistency of our coding, to generate "code
> > reports"--or reports on our use of particular TEI elements, etc., and to
> > gather for myself a comprehensive view of our editing and data
> extraction to
> > our centralized prosopography list (currently posted for use by our
> editing
> > team at http://mitford.pitt.edu/si.xml )
>
> If you are not already doing doing so, then you can store your queries
> into the database. By doing this you can then execute them via HTTP,
> by accessing them either from one of the three mechanisms that eXist
> offers - it's REST Server, via. XQuery URL Rewriting or RESTXQ.
>
> By having these stored queries generate
> HTML/XHTML/XForms/JavaScript/JSON etc, you can produce a dynamic
> website in XQuery, just as you would in any other server side-language
> such as PHP or Ruby.
>
> >  I'm working with my head of IT at my campus, who's more
> > familiar with databases like MySQL, etc. but has been learning about
> eXist
> > and is willing to work with me to experiment as we try to build query
> tools
> > for the Mitford project (as well as the other smaller-scale projects.) I
> > need (or at least I think I need) to learn PHP and REST, and I'm keen to
> do
> > that when I come up for air from a busy college semester: I like to think
> > I'm a quick study when I find time to breathe from my teaching load!
>
> You do not need PHP to produce a full web-application with eXist,
> instead it can all be done in XQuery and/or XSLT, XForms etc. Of
> course, there is nothing stopping you from using PHP with eXist if you
> really want to.
>
> > Here are some things I and my IT colleague would like to learn as we
> figure
> > out how best to implement eXist for the Digital Mitford project:
> >
> > * Should eXist be installed at the "front end" of a public-facing web
> > project? How direct can the relationship be between web interface and
> eXist
> > database?
>
> I would suggest not. eXist is really a database and application
> server. It is always good practice to situate these things behind your
> web-server.
>
> > * What methods do other projects use to invoke and deliver XQuery scripts
> > from website to database?
>
> Typically you reverse-proxy from your main Web Server, the parts of
> Web Applications built in eXist that you wish to expose into the URL
> space of your main website. This sort of architecture is discussed in
> some detail in the upcoming eXist book from O'Reilly (a shameless plug
> I am afraid ;-)).
>
> > We're considering whether to have eXist run behind a firewall on another
> > server, to speak to public-facing site pages.
>
> Yes, this is the normal scenario.
>
> > In reading eXist's development
> > pages, I'm thinking I'd like the simplest possible interface: If I could
> > have users press a button that simply delivered an XQuery file to
> process in
> > eXist, and have eXist post the HTML output directly to the site, I'd be
> > pretty happy---I'm just not sure how it's done!
>
> Do you want your users to write and submit queries to eXist? If this
> is for a teaching/learning purpose I could understand. Otherwise, you
> normally store parameterised queries into eXist and invoke them
> directly via HTTP and they produce HTML.
>
> > This is my second time teaching the coding-based DH class at my campus,
> and
> > I hope to offer it each fall. Each year, prepping for the class offers
> some
> > opportunity for me to explore something new--and this month, as my
> students
> > are writing their first XQuery to the eXist installed on our intranet
> > "sandbox" server (behind the campus firewall), I'm hoping to learn how to
> > bring eXist from behind our firewall...any leads are most appreciated!
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Elisa
> > --
> > Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD
> > Associate Professor of English
> > University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg
> > Humanities Division
> > 150 Finoli Drive
> > Greensburg, PA  15601  USA
> > E-mail: eb...@pi...
> > about.me/ebbondar
> >
> >
> >>
>
> --
> Adam Retter
>
> eXist Developer
> { United Kingdom }
> ad...@ex...
> irc://irc.freenode.net/existdb
>