Director - flash database

[mariomusil]

need help on project!

I'm working on a personal language learning project.

Im developing everything in flash, because i like the environment better than director, but i need to create a dictionary database and flash has a hard time with it. This database would have thousands of entries. On the left side I need the list of words and once a user selects the word they'd get a definition on the right side. I need active searching on it. If you can do this in flash that would be better, but im worried about performance.

I think it would be possible to do it in director and than have the rest of the flash in the director movie communicate with it, only the dictionary part would be in director, the rest would be in flash.



Please let me know if you can do this and how much it would cost.

( i don't have too much money) I know I would probably have to license a database software plugin for director, but I want to keep it as simple as possible, I don't want the user to have to install anything, the whole thing should run from the cd.
Oh yeah I'll need the database to be encrypted and it will have to handle foreign characters (accents and so on)

[ChicoMendez]

Hi - did u manage to do this?

[mariomusil]

no i have not i just posted it 2 days ago

[Northcode]

A number of third party projector tools (see list below) provide the ability to make Flash talk to databases using ADO or ODBC. Anyone who has a recent version of IE will have already installed MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components) as part of that install so you can get away with assuming support for Microsoft Access and use that to store your dictionary. It's also easy to detect whether MDAC is installed or not and run the prepackaged installer (mdac_typ.exe) that you can grab from http://msdn.microsoft.com/data

SWF Studio http://www.northcode.com
Flash Studio http://www.multidmedia.com
Jugglor http://www.***********.com
SWFKit http://www.swfkit.com
SWiSH Studio http://www.swishzone.com
FlashAnts http://www.flashants.com
LPFlashEX http://www.logicplus.com.hk
Flash 'N Pack http://www.flashnpack.com

My product, SWF Studio, also allows you to work with something called a catalog, which is a self-contained (i.e nothing to install) read only database that lives in a text file where the columns of data are just tab delimited so you can create your database with notepad. The access times are VERY fast. You can download an example phone database I built from www.northcode.com/misc/phone.zip to see how it works. The phone.exe file contains a copy of the phone database inside the EXE so you can just run that.

[MDM Support]

Hi, if you happen to try Flash Studio PRO v2 be sure to check out the Database examples available at http://www.multidmedia.com/software/...udio/downloads

[mariomusil]

thank you for the advice, but I have tried flash studio and it doesn't work with a large number of words

I will need to put in at least 30000 words each with a sentence long definition.

Northcode Can this be done in swf studio?

The other thing is, i'd like to have one list of the words
and one window would display the definition after i would clik the word.

I'd like to be able to list all the words and look through them without searching them as well
Can this be done with swf studio?



Thank you

[Northcode]

The biggest problem you'll have isn't with the database related technologies (searching etc) it's probably putting 30,000 words in a Flash list or data grid for browsing. Flash can hold the data, but loading the entire list may be a bit painful.

The phone catalog example I sent has a list of over 50,000 phone numbers, names and departments. A search of the catalog for "*smith*" (partial search for smith anywhere in the name field) takes less than half a second to complete and returns over 700 records. Searching for an exact match on one word will be even faster.

[mariomusil]

okay so lets say i just use the search system,
can i set it up so that the words are in one window and the definitions are in another? Right now the phone number name and department are all in one line in one window.

Thanks for all your help

[Northcode]

It's all ActionScript behind the scenes. I constructed the result list to show the names and numbers together, but you can display them any way you like!

[mariomusil]

okay,

i'll try doing that with the sample you sent me, and if it works i'll buy you software.

thanks

[mariomusil]

Northcode,

is there a way to turn the results into buttons?

I'd like to set it up so that i would click on the words and the definition would appear

thanks

[Northcode]

The plugin returns the results as a list of values so you can do whatever you want with them. If you're displaying them in an HTML text field then the easiest thing to do would be to use asfunction in an HREF to call a function and trigger the display of the definition for the selected work. There's a nice little asfunction tutorial over at actionscript.org.

[mariomusil]

hey northcode thanks for all your help.

Im still having trouble implementing it. Would you or any one else be willing to set this up for me. (I would pay you of course)

I'd like to get this project done, but I just figure it all by myself.

If you are interested please let me know.

my email is mariomusil@yahoo.com

[BodBod]

Would a stand alone sql database engine which communicates with Flash by XMLsocket be useful?

[mariomusil]

would that work on a cd ?
this won't be a website.

Please let me know.

Thanks

[BodBod]

No, not a website, that's too easy

My current version won't work direct from a CD because of the read only issues (it manipulates flatfiles). Installation to a hard drive is required in it's current form.

I have a thought on how a sql database could be done that would work direct from a CD (no install, no web access, no third party apps required). But it's just a theory and would require a lot of polish before beta. Worth pursuing?