Expression Engine Entities, db structure data import and performance

4th March 2010, not far from Corn Exchange, Brighton

I met my mate Adam from http://www.engaging.net/ and we had an interesting session looking into various aspect of the Expression Engine architecture.

Expression Engine Entities and db structure:

We looked at how its ability to define entities is reflected in the database structure where Expression Engine entities are not created as database entities (DB tables) but instead as record entries in a table, we touched on the possible approaches to a CMS database design touching on issues like advantages of a normalized database with the difficult of creating a CMS that needs to handle an unknown database schema.

Data importing and populating:

We also talked about approaches to populating the Expression Engine MySQL DB from other database and I illustrated the approach to developing a tool that would allow you to import data from normalized databases by interrogating a DB schema. Adam has told me he has had quite a bit of work importing data from people who have given up on Joomla. I pointed out that if Joomla takes the same approach as expression Engine and has no proper normalized architecture it will need a specific implementation of a data import tool.

We also talked about importing data from other sources like web sites and XML and how that can be done using the scripting language I have developed with George Boobyer for blue-bag this language is especially designed for fast visual design of data extraction and transformation for HTML, XML, SOAP and databases.

Adam also showed me his product External Entries allowing EE systems to integrate with none EE MySQL databases

Performance:

We talked about the database as a possible bottleneck especially one like the Expression Engine that duo to its flat nature is not optimized for performance (please correct me if you think you I am wrong). Adam talked about the various tools/approaches that can be used to cash Expression Engine by converting pages or elements with in them to static HTML using  Apache htaccess files.

We also had a chat of a few other technologies like:

• Ruby on rails Ruby on Rails (Rails or RoR) as a Web application framework
• Python
• Django a high-level Python Web framework
• Pylons a Ruby, Python and Perl web framework

Hopefully next time we can expend on those more

Look out soon for similar session covering the drupal architecture

Guy Shneerson