Web Strategy and Development Blog

The HighEdWeb 2008 Conference Web Site

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They say the cobler’s children are the last to get shoes. We thought that this shouldn’t be the case any longer for the HighEdWeb conference. I spent the last 10 months (with the help of my student programmers) trying to make the HighEdWeb conference website use technology we could show off, rather than just enough to get by. Browsing through the site will only give you half the story – some of the best features most people don’t even see.

XML/XSLT

Early on, we had problems where the database connection on our host kept dropping. So to prevent any issues, we brought the administrative and database functions to a Missouri State hosted site. However, I still wanted public functions such as the schedule to display on the main site. The most straightforward way to accomplish this was by outputting the schedule as an XML feed and to consume it on the main site. Getting the XSLT to display the schedule the way we wanted took an entire day to code. Take a look at both of them:

I wonder if for a fun challenge I can get the next conference chair to have a competition for the best application to consume the XML schedule?

From Proposal to Conference

Another feature we spent a long time working on was a full database driven web application to manage the conference. Proposal submission, review, acceptence emails with promotional codes, exports for conference publications and more were integrated into a single system. We also spent a long time discussing and planning the user experience for registration so that the final product would be easy to use. I never realized how many different discounts or variables went into a registration.

Beyond the Desktop

In recognition of the large number of devices that would be accessing the site, we created a mobile version of the website for the first time. Rather than sacrifice features on the main site so that it would render correctly anywhere, instead we made an alternate site specifically designed as an on-the-go reference for the conference.

Introduction to RQL

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Since I’ve already had requests, I thought I’d post a summary of my workshop from HighEdWeb 08 along with the materials for those who couldn’t be there. From the packed house and all the followup questions, it’s pretty clear that there is a high degree of interest in this subject.

About RQL

RQL is an XML based language. Queries are submitted to the server and are answered with an RQL response (similar to HTTP requests). IODATA is always the root tag. Tag names are always uppercase while attribute names are always lowercase.

Moving around the project tree is one of the most fundemental activities in RQL. When moving through the tree, you must always keep in mind that you alternate between pages and links. While we are all pretty familiar with a page, a link inculdes dynamic anchors, lists, containers, hdllists, etc.

Using RQL in SmartEdit

While Pre-Execute blocks may at first seem the logical place to use RQL in SmartEdit, they contain no session information. This means that RQL Queries inside a pre-execute block must log in and log out in addition to running the desired queries.

Using an iframe or ajax will preserve session information and make debugging substantially easier, but can inadvertendly cause security risks.

Using RQL from an External Application

If you’ve ever wanted to perform an action starting at a tree node and all following pages, this is the place to look. Moving around the tree can be dangerous. You must make sure that you properly account for references, multiple connections, recursive connections, containers as well as other issues.

The C# project contained in the handout provides both an RQL Function Library as well as the framework for safely traversing the tree from a console application.

Related Materials

Introduction to RQL Handout

Here’s a short listing and description of what’s included:

  • Presentation
  • RQL Admin Website: an ASP.Net 2.0 web application. Designed to be published on the CMS web server it allows users to test RQL Queries.
  • RQLAutomation Project: a ASP.Net 2.0 C# Console application. The application will prompt for login credentials, a project, and then perform the specified action on the specified page and all following pages. (In class we submitted and released the page).
  • Other Goodies: A collection of various SmartEdit/SmartTree RQL Plugins and associated files (including a basic RQLFunctions.asp include file).