Flash-dbis a community of Freelance Flash Designers and Programmers, Dealing with Database issues, mySQL, MS SQL, Access and server side scripting including PHP, ASP, CFM, Perl web services and resources for Macromedia Flash.

The Flash-db message boards deal with all things relating to the integration of Flash 5 / MX with server side scripts and database connectivity. Scripting topics discussed include PHP, ASP, Coldfusion, Perl, and JSP. Database discussions include MySQL, Access, MSSQL, and others. Data management including XML and Soap. Also including a variety of other topics ranging from Servers to Javascripting.

FlashDB is a small database for Flash 4/5 written in Perl. It is very easy to use, and is very basic. There are just two actions: read and write. With "write" you can write a set of Flash variables to the webserver. With "read" you can read them all back into Flash. Simple yet powerful and flexible.

FlashDB uses the "Load variables" action that was introduced in Flash 4. The database will therefore not work with Flash 3 or older. The "Load variables" action will write all currently active variables in one big lump to the server, or read them all back into Flash. You don't have to specify which variables you want to write or read, and you don't have to specify their format, type, size, recordname, database userid/password, or other things that can make other databases such a pain to use.

FlashDB has no limit to the number of records (a set of Flash variables) you can store, other than the size of your harddisk. A record can hold up to 131072 bytes, imposed by the POST method of browsers. If you are planning a large database (more than 25.000 records, more than 1Kb per record) or heavy use (more than 5000 actions per day) then you should probably look around for something else. FlashDB can handle it allright, but commercial databases will be faster.