I'm curious if you could distribute a command line tool to run as a CDF file?
For example, distributing a command line tool that loads data from a database, transmogrifies it somehow, then writes it back to the database. You might not want an interface on that at all.
Is this possible?
An example of a very simple CDF script might be:
(* Open a database *)
Needs["DatabaseLink`"];
dbconn = OpenSQLConnection[JDBC["PostgreSQL", "localhost/test"]];
(* Write something important into the database. *)
SQLInsert[dbconn, "still_alive_at",{"alive_at"}, {SQLDateTime[DateList[]]}]
(* Close connection *)
CloseSQLConnection[dbconn]
This would be run from a cron job nightly, without interaction. Is something like this possible?
EDIT: The answer seems to be "Yes, but with significant contortions". In the real world, you should buy a Mathematica license for each production instance running your Mathematica script.
Hopefully Wolfram can remedy this situation in the future. It's a bit of a barrier to buy Mathematica for development, then ask any users to buy a Mathematica license also just to run a script. Other platforms EG: java don't charge for the runtime environement.