Database driven CD-ROMs
18 August 2006, by Karl Bunyan
If you have a website, you may be able to put the whole site directly onto a CD. The advantage of this is that it may not need much alteration of your existing site, however there are limitations such as if a site uses a database or has other interactive functionality. Generally, this takes more time and effort to make work. 
We’re often asked about CD-ROMs with databases on them to provide facilities such as search tools, data-driven brochure content or other product data. There are a number of options that are appropriate for different circumstances. These may be something as simple as copying HTML files onto a CD, using Macromedia Flash and building something bespoke, or taking a similar approach but use Macromedia Director. There are pros and cons of each option, which I’ve outlined below:
HTML Files
If you have a website, you may be able to put the whole site directly onto a CD. The advantage of this is that it may not need much alteration of your existing site, however there are limitations such as if a site uses a database or has other interactive functionality. Generally, this takes more time and effort to make work.
The other disadvantage of running normal web files from a CD-ROM is that without extra work they will generally run in the browser installed on the machine on which they’re being viewed. This relies on the end user’s computer being set up correctly and also doesn’t look as professional as the other options.
Macromedia Flash
Flash is a very good presentation tool and newer versions have very good scripting capabilities. Generally, writing a tool to work with a database requires quite a lot of bespoke programming work.
Macromedia Director
Director is much more powerful than Flash and generally performs much better for doing data-intensive operations. It is, however, like Flash, more of a tool for presentation than for data. Director is often the better choice for CD-ROMs, though, given its speed and flexibility, but it is not the easiest when it comes to adding interactive tools.
There are options, however, which fall into two categories:
- Writing bespoke data storing and search code
- Use a third party database engine compatible with Director
At Exponetic we’ve used both routes as were appropriate for each client, and in another post I’m going to run through the main principles of both.
Summary
There are a number of options for running an application similar to a website from a CD-ROM, and which one is right depends very much on where you’re starting from and the specifics of the application that’s going to be run. HTML, Flash and Director all have their place in the right circumstances.
August 18, 2006 at 8:02 pm
Filed in: Front-end, Programming
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