I am developing a flash app where musicians can showcase themselves. It will
already be hooked up to Flash Media Server to stream flvs and mp3s. the main
part of the app however will be artist profile pages conating lots of text
based details. For this (and many other things like user log in, data about
the profile itelf like background color and things like that) I originally
planned on using coldfusion to query mySQL with the artist name and then
deliver back all the relevant data.
However I have recently found out about Remote Shared Objects and have
subsequently worked out the basics of how to use them and have found they could
just as easily do the same job. But I am concerned about how efficient they
will be to use as this is not what FMS seems to be made for. FMS delivers
media and does realtime things but can it realy be used as a full on database
solution? Is it a good idea?
If it is a good solution then I don't have to spend more money on a
coldfusion licence ($1,299 - $5,999) and a seperate dedecated server (?1079.88
per year) and get a much better dedecated server for my FMS.
But on the other hand i don't want my flv and mp3 streaming to suffer and
the FMS to become unreliable because it's being used as a database solution if
it shouldn't be.
Do you see what I'm saying. Any ideas will be greatfully recieved.

I wouldn't use shared objects for that.

Remote shared objects are great when you want to have data syncronized amongst
connected users, but if the data is going to different for every user (and none
of the other users need that data for anything), it seems like a waste of
resources on the FMS end.

all the users will be accessing the same data. It will be a database of lots
of artist profiles wich users can then search and check out different artists.
Here is a site which is a similar model to the one i am creating:
www.purevolume.com

Originally posted by: doof moof
all the users will be accessing the same data. It will be a database of lots
of artist profiles wich users can then search and check out different artists.
Here is a site which is a similar model to the one i am creating:
www.purevolume.com

I still don't know if I'd opt for using shared objects on this one, for a
couple of reasons:

1. I'd want to repurpose that data at some point. If it's all stored in rso's,
any application that wants to use that data will either have to make a
connection to FMS, or decypher the rso data to reuse it.
2. I'd probably want to store images along with the data, and you can't store
binary blobs in an rso (not in a useable format anyway)
3. I'd have to build a separate admin tool for managing the rso's.
4. I'd be putting additional load on the FMS server, and I'd really prefer to
use those resources for critical functions rather than wasting it on pushing
data my http or remoting server would handle more efficiently.
5. The users don't need to share the data in real time. Although they are
using the same data, they don't need to worry about changes to that data in
real time.

What I might do is have a couple of rso's on the server that contain things
like new additions and lists of most popular records. I would then have FMS
run a query on the database (via remoting or LoadVars) every so often to update
those lists. The idea here is that you want to use rso's for data that might
change while the user is connected, and use your http or remoting server for
data that is just sitting in a database.

Thanks for your replies guys.
I'll take your advice and keep fms for the streaming media and i think thats a
greate idea maybe to use rso for new additions and most popular records. I'm
now learning how to use asp.net for all my data base uses as the dedecated
server i will be using is allready set up with .NET and IIS (which i previously
knew nothing about) so that will save me ??? on coldfusion licences. over all
my app is going to turn out to be a much better, and more efficient venture
thanks to your advice.