Which server model do you use?

[ultrasuite]

Folks,

Which server model do you use with Dreamweaver.  ASP, PHP_MySQL or ColdFusion?

Is anyone still using ASP.Net or JSP with DW?

In your opinion, which of the three server models is best supported by DW CS5 and which one needs most improvement?

UltraSuite

[David_Powers]

Judging from the traffic in this forum and the Dreamweaver General Discussion forum, the overwhelming majority of people who use Dreamweaver for server-side development are using PHP. The decision to drop support for ASP.NET and JSP in CS4, and then ASP JavaScript in CS5 also tells a story about the direction Adobe sees its market moving.

Many PHP users were upset by Adobe's decision to discontinue the Adobe Dreamweaver Developer Toolbox (ADDT). Adobe decided the market was too small, but it might be a lucrative market for an independent extension developer like you. Your main competition probably comes from WebAssist, which has also decided to focus on PHP extensions.

[ultrasuite]

David,

First of all let me say how impressed I am with your contribution to the Dreamweaver Community.  Your tutorials and other resources are most impressive and I am sure they are appreciated by a lot of Dreameaver users.

What you have said about PHP is precisely what I have heard from people via private emails.  That is why I recently released a package of simple but frequently used PHP extensions.

WebAssist seem to have done a great job and I am sure I'll be no competiiton for them or anybody else.  For me this is more like a hobby. That is why when I had the market for server-side extensions, all to myself, I still kept giving away a lot of free extensions.

I remember in the early days a fellow Dreamweaver sent me an email saying that he had found the MagicSuite on a couple of Chinese servers.  I went to take a look and two servers traced to Shanghai mentioned more than 20,000 downloads each of the MagicSuite, which was free anyway.  This was just within days of a book that was published in Chinese in Taiwan and which (with my permission) had discussed each of my extensions with screenshots, etc.

Sorry for going off on a tangent.  Thanks for your reasoned response.

J.S.

[David_Powers]

Thanks, Jag. Good luck with your revived extension building activities. I presented a session at Adobe MAX a couple of months ago on using the Server Behavior Builder to create some basic PHP functionality. The workbook is going to be edited, and published as a couple of tutorials in the Adobe Developer Connection, hopefully in the next month or so. The idea is to show people how to use the SBB to automate the creation of frequently used routines, such as not displaying items missing from a recordset (a simple if... else conditional statement).

[pziecina]

Hi

You may also look into developing extensions that use, php:pdo or mysqli, as these are becoming more widely used by the dw community.

As an example the 'rough-cut' pdo extension I did for dw has had more than 900 downloads in the last six months, (60 so far this month) and as it is not 'advertised' anywhere shows that there is a requirement for such extensions, (had to stop, or at least pause development due to (now almost recovered from) major eye surgery).

PZ

[ultrasuite]

PZ,

Hope you soon recover completely from your eye surgery.
Your suggestion sounds good but, perhaps, you'd like to continue since you are already developing such extensions. It seems that a lot of people find your extension useful and it's getting promoted by word of mouth.
If you don't mind posting the link publicly, do post it here so we can check it out.
J.S.
http://www.ultrasuite.com/
http://twitter.com/dwUltraSuite

[pziecina]

Hi JS

The extension, documentation and tutorial can be downloaded here - http://www.pziecina.com/design/dreamweaver/pdo_extension.php.

PZ

[ultrasuite]

The extension, documentation and tutorial can be downloaded here - http://www.pziecina.com/design/dreamweaver/pdo_extension.php.

Thanks, PZ.  I'll check it out and give you my feedback.

J.S.

UltraSuite