Civilution LLC

It's making something work that's hard.
           -Bill Parks, AeroVironment

Historical Platform: Oracle + AOLServer + ACS
As of last year, all of our tools and systems were based on the proven web technology pyramid of the Oracle database, the AOLServer web server that interfaces to that database, and the Arsdigita Community System (or "ACS"), a collection of scripts that use the database and web server to provide a number of very useful functions that are especially relevant to web services that involve large numbers of people with varying levels of authority and access.

The Oracle database is accessed via the database language SQL. Pages served by the AOLServer can contain programs written in the scripting language TCL. These programs are interpreted on the fly to access, query, and add to the database and compile dynamic content.

While Oracle is of course proprietary commercial software, the AOLServer and ACS are Open Source. These three components have been used together to build a great number of commercial and public web services by a number of developers and publishers, most notably by Arsdigita itself.

Current Platform: PostgreSQL + AOLServer + OpenACS
The OpenACS is a completely Open Source version of the Arsdigita Community System.

PostgreSQL is an increasingly popular Open Source database system, and the OpenACS is a version of the Arsdigita Community System that has been ported to use that database instead of the traditional and proprietary Oracle system.

The OpenACS is a very exciting development because it allows us to develop and deploy very powerful websites without the hassles of registration or royalties.

Civilution-specific components
Our systems, then, consist of application-specific data tables in the database, TCL programs that access those tables either themselves or through the scripts packaged with the ACS or OpenACS, and web pages that call those TCL programs to process input form data, perform database actions, and format the output as necessary.

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