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CCXI XML Data Island Library
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Version
2004.0
Take the Strain off Your Server.
Use the CCXI XML Data Island Library and ASP table
control to allow users to interact with an entire
dataset--without having to constantly contact the
server for processing.
When you need to display a moderate amount of data and
you want to avoid server round trips for operations
like paging, sorting and searching, then CCXI makes it
simple to set up.
The CCXItable control allows you to create a table
that binds--on the client machine--rows from an XML
data island with a template that you define. CCXItable
makes it easy to define templates and create XML data
islands.
What is the best way to present two or more pages of
data to users? The most common approach is to
dynamically generate html that contains the first page
then, when the user wants the second page, dynamically
generate the second page too. Then regenerate the
first page when the user wants to see it again! And,
of course, do this for each user who accesses the data.
Obviously, all this processing can put an unbearable
strain on your server.
One way to solve this problem is to generate a single
(long) static page of scrollable data. But, what about
sorting and searching? What if many of the data items
contain image tags, making the page-load time
unbearably long as each graphic is fetched?
XML data islands provide a way to incorporate into a
web page a moderate amount of data (even html) without
forcing the browser to render all of it at once. They
also make it possible to move processing of paging,
sorting and searching commands to javascript on the
client side.
Unfortunately, there are many "gotchas" in dealing
with XML islands. Inner tags cannot be the same as
other valid html tags. Different browsers have
different requirements and quirks. And it takes quite
a bit of javascript to successively navigate, extract
and format data for display. And, you have to format
your data to fit these requirements in the first place.
CCXI makes it easy.
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