Basic Application Development Queries

[Deepak]

Hi All,

I want to create a Social App on orkut but having many doubts. Though
I've read the Developers Guide on orkut but no clear about the basic
concept of this new growing technology. My doubts are below. Please
try to help me.

0) First and the most confusion for me is what is the Gadget file? Is
this contains the actual application which we want to show on orkut or
any other social site. Coz what I'm getting is, the Gadget file and
our actual application are two different things, physically atleast.
Our application will contains our data to show to user and the gadget
file will be needed to connect it to the social container and making
our application open social oriented by using the legacy gadgets
libraries.

1) The actual content of my application which will be visible on
orkut, means the web-site which I will create, should reside on my web-
server?

2) Can I create this site in any language - PhP, ASP, ASP.Net to make
it dynamic?

3) If yes, then how could the Gadget file (XML file) which resides on
my server will
connect to/show this site content because the Gadget file can contains
only HTML & Javascript. How could I render my site content in the
gadget file in such dynamic environment where the data comes from a
Database.

4) If I use content type=url in the gadget file then my whole site
gets pull down at orkut and without any other codes to be written in
the gadget file!!!!!

5) If we can do the above with so ease then why there is so many
libraries created like, gadget.* API, legacy gadget API. What are
their use?

6) I know RESTful Data API is not on the stage right now coz no
container is supporting the 0.8 version but what is the use of this so
called Server side API tool. In the future do we need to create our
site in this API to get on the Social Network?

I know the list have gone pretty long and somewhat difficult to
answere but considered to have a thought on.

I'm stucked at my first stage of the development coz Im not getting a
clear idea about this.
Please try to answere my queries.

Thanks in advance.

Deepak

[Viveka]

I saw the exact similar thread at
http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-container/browse_thread/thread/e1e0b46de4c0fcd8?hl=en
and answered it. Try
http://digitalbhoomi.in/blog/2008/07/19/how-to-create-opensocial-application-part-1/
for the basics.