a project needs help

[damnsexy]

Hi all,

I am working for a start up ATM(automatic teller machine) switch company, it is running on Oracle 8 database on HP-UX and special ATM management software that updates it. Currently we are in the testing stage with just 1 atm operational. The daily reports generated for just 1 atm take about 20-25 pages of text daily...imagine what happens with just 50 atms, and there will be more . So I am undertaking a project of developing a report viewing system for the customer care people. This system obviously must be running on NT because they dont know what a unix prompt is and they dont even want to know what an SQL query is . The reports being generated now are essentially just simple SQL queries to pull all the columns from the database and put it in files. Obviously making such a system would make all things more flexible. I think the setup would be NT 4, IIS 4.0,ASP, ADO, MTS 2.0 (now i was reading that MTS is required for working with Oracle, pls confirm this). Now the beggest problem that I am forseeing is that the main database is on unix ... now I have NO idea how to even connect to it using ADO. I've been playing around with ADO on a Access database at home and I've succeded with it. I think that my knowledge of ADO at this stage would be sufficient to accomlish the task of running simple sql queries to pull resultsets from that database with NO updating. What I need is some specific pointers on how to set it up..especially the connection to the unix box stuff(unix box has its own IP!).
Any existing source code (not copyrighted ofcourse would be of great help, so I can learn more stuff)
Unfortunately microsoft site only gives some vague information on this topic so all I got out of it is that it is indeed possible.
So all the help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

PS. SORRY FOR THE LONG POST i just wanted to explain in clear terms what the situation is.

 

[culshaja]

Why not use Crystal Reports 8. It is very flexible and has a web interface.
If not, then to use ADO to Connect to the Oracle database, then you need to install Net8 client n the machine that is issuing the database calls through ADO. You then need to use SQL*Net easy config to set up youtr database connection to the Oracle database.
As far as I am aware you do not need to use MTS to connect to Oracle. My first response is why not use OO4O to talk to the database as this is more robust! Also, if I remember rightly, the ODBC driver gives you more functionality than the OLEDB driver for Oracle!!
After this has been done then its plain sailing - its just like talking to Access.

REMEMBER - most important things is to install Oracle client tools onto the machine issuing the SQL calls to the database. This install will give you the documentation that you need aswell.

If you need anymore help, I'll try and clarify further.

James James Culshaw
jculshaw@active-data-solutions.co.uk

http://www.active-data-solutions.co.uk

http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=193305

 

[caf]

My two cents

You can also try using XML/XSL.
Separate it from your compiled code so that you can modify it as you wish without needing to re-compile.
I've seen a nice article on Ad-Hoc reporting. must check my History. will get back when I find it. (You don't need a browser that reads xml, you parse it on the server if the client has a non-xml compliant browser and parse it on the client if the client has a browser capable of reading xml.)

caf