What is the easiest way to query and display (no updates) jBase information
on a webserver? Any help will be appreciated. By the way, jBase 3.4 on
Linux and the web server is IIS on 2003 server.

Mark

Mark,

You have a few options. If you don't really want to learn new
technology and do your programming in jBC then I suggest using
DesignBais (www.designbais.com). Let me know if you want a personal
demo. Or you can join one of our free Webinars. The first one,
scheduled for Dec 20th is sold out but we have another on Jan 10th.

Rick

Mark wrote:
The easiest way is to write a CGI program in jBC BASIC. Not necessarily
the best way, but undoubtedly both easy and cheap.

Luke

Numerous ways...

CGI program (simply write a jBase program that is referenced directory as a
cgi web page - the CGI code will have to generate the full page along with
all html tags). You would need jBase on the web server - though the data
could still reside on the linux server.

asp and jRCS - use jRCS (a third party connectivity tool supplied by jBASE)
to call subroutines or read data on the jBase server - using vbscript. This
is the way I would go forward, means the web server can be seperated from
the database server (ie the jBase server can be on the "internal" side of
the firewall). This is the method I would use.

aspx and jrcs.net - similar to the above but just using .net technology.

Some third party tool, such as DesignBais or mv.net. More expensive.

I would use the second or third methods - personally I would use vbscript in
asp to create a link to the database using jrcs, call a single databasic
subroutine that pulls back the data as a single dynamic array and then write
out the html in the asp page. Very easy to do - I can supply sample code
if required.

If you are doing this a lot, with seperate teams (web designers and database
programmers) then aspx may be better - you could encapsulate your database
"calls" into a class that converts a dynamic array to an XML data stream,
so you could simply give your web designers the "program name" and the XML
that will be returned - something they can easily work with whilst your
databasic guys can work in databasic only. A variation on this is to
build this class into a web service. If I was building a web "application"
this would be the method I would use.

There are - of course - lots of variations on a theme. If you were looking
for secure (ie guaranteed!) data updates as well then you may look towards
using message queuing as a method of communication between the web server
and the database server - Jim Idle (ex architect of jBASE now with Cache) is
the expert on this. I believe that there is still available a jBASE-IBM MSQ
interface (ie so you can read/write a message queue from databasic).

Regards
Simon
"Mark" <marklb (AT) bogus (DOT) net> wrote

"Luke Webber" <luke (AT) webber (DOT) com.au> wrote

Is it really that simple? What are the drawbacks? Since I'm not doing any
updates (view only) this sounds like the way to go.

Thanks

Mark

"Simon Verona" <nomail (AT) nomail (DOT) zzz> wrote


The jRCS link sounds interesting. I'll have to talk to the jBase sales rep.
I think writing Basic as a CGI sounds the most doable. The jBase
programmers (I'm just the network, I don't write much code) already are
haveing jBase write about 1500 static pages each night. Implementing a
similar program as a CGI should be doable. I just never thought of using
basic as a CGI script language....

Thanks

Mark

Well, if you are writing static pages in jBC already, then converting to
dynamic pages using CGI should be a doddle.

It's fine for low volume, simple web pages.

As soon as the volume gets higher or you want to start getting "flashier"
with the web pages, you will find that splitting data and presentation will
be a must. I'd hate to have to change a jBC program every time I want to
change the "static" content of a web page.


Regards
"Mark" <marklb (AT) bogus (DOT) net> wrote

Mark wrote:

You'll need to write subroutines to get the parameters from the request
using the getenv function, and then to convert the encoded information
to straight ascii (turn "+" to space and %xx refs to characters). Other
than that, it really is a breeze.

Luke

"Simon Verona" <nomail (AT) nomail (DOT) zzz> wrote


Folks:

This may be slightly off topic:

I have had the coders write a simple query application. On the command line
it seems to work fine, the html it outputs looks good, but I get an error
when I run through a browser:
{
CGI Error
The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of
HTTP headers.

}
I have the content-type line printing first and I already have perl scripts
running on the server. The permissions on the script directory are set to
"Scripts and Executables". Is there something simple I'm missing? Is there
something special I need to do to allow .exe files as a "proper" cgi?

Thanks for your help

Mark

Mark wrote:
Luke Webber wrote:
Luke, how would a Linux-based CGI work when the initial query is
coming into IIS on another box? Some proxy would need to be setup.

I've written a little proxy using mv.NET which wouldn't require a CGI
to be written in jBASIC. It passes a query string to a normal jBASIC
program which returns a block of HTML, plain text, whatever. Mark,
that's about as easy as it gets.

Of course some code needs to be written on the IIS side - the query
has to come from somewhere and the results have to go somewhere.

The runtime component to make that happen is about US$260 plus SMA/yr.
The same code could be used in D3, U2, and other platforms. I'll give
the component and source away for free, I'm just interested in the
mv.NET licenses for this. After people have a run-time license, I'd
enjoy writing other little freeware ditties to do specific functions,
web services interfaces, pipes to/from Excel, or Outlook, etc..

Offer is open.

TG@ removethisNebula-RnD .com