The Various Components of the BMLT System
Central to everything, is the main BMLT Root server. It starts with the BMLT database, which is a MySQL database, accessed via the PHP PDO subsystem; allowing greater security (PDO, when used properly, will prevent SQL injection attacks).
There are three direct HTML views: The Admin HTML Interface (which is used by the BMLT Administrators to modify and maintain the main database), the BMLT Semantic Workshop, and the Observer Browser, which is really just a local implementation of the BMLT Basic Satellite.
The Semantic Interface exports views of the database as CSV (Comma-Separated Values) data, XML, simple HTML code or JSON. This access is security-limited (so that secure server information can’t be accessed), but is extremely powerful and high-performance.
The NAWS Export consists of a special version of the CSV export that is designed to be used by NA World Services. There are also a couple of CSV and XML specializations for GPS devices and software.
After the Semantic Interface, we have the three standard Web satellite clients (BMLT Basic, the Drupal Module, and the Standard WordPress Plugin), which are all based on the Satellite Base Class, which, in turn uses the BMLT Driver to access some of the Root Server information. The Base Class tends to use mostly JSON, via JavaScript, to access server data.
The Tabbed UI WordPress Plugin and the NA Printed Meeting List Site use the JSON Semantic interface only.
The iOS App accesses the server via the XML Semantic Interface.
The users of the system (people looking for meetings) will only see the items on the right side of the screen (the Satellites). All the Root Server stuff, and the Semantic Interface stuff, is invisible to them. Think of it as a duck, swimming across a pond. From above the waterline, they look smooth and relaxed as they cleanly and quietly cruise across the water.
However, below the waterline, they are paddling like mad. The users only see above the waterline.
Here is a link to some technical code documentation for the BMLT projects.