Paradox & web pages 1

[LWB]

I've used Paradox for years, and have built several applications, including one with extensive ObjectPal code, so I'd like to think I have a clue about Paradox!

However, a someone asked me about using a portion of a database I developed to provide users with certain data from a website. The Paradox portion of this is simple queries of linked tables. But I know nothing (and am not sure I really want to know) about html and web publishing. The idea is that a user could ask for certain information that would then be displayed on the webpage.

I read the portion of the Paradox 9 manual about web publishing - obviously this is dynamic and not static. But I have no clue about what is actually needed on the server the website resides on. The organization that wants to do this does not have a server of their own. I'm assuming that Paradox must reside on the server. My ISP (as an example) gives me some amount of disk space for webpages (which I have never used), but I can't imagine I can say "please install this program on your server for me".

Can anyone tell me what exactly is involved in dynamic publishing of webpages using Paradox?

Lynn

 

[footpad]

Lynn,

Dynamic publishing is a very broad topic; there are several ways to publish database information on the web. I can think of a few different approaches, each appropriate to different scenarios.

Here's two ways:

1. Starting with Paradox 8, Corel has provided a web publishing ActiveX control that essentially let you run Paradox on a web server and have it respond to queries. In this case, you need a) a Windows server that's also running a web server, such as Apache, IIS, or something along those lines.

In this scenario, the Webserver control listens to a given port and then first events that Paradox can respond to. You'd use ObjectPAL to process the events, run queries (or setRanges, most likely), and ourput the results as formatted HTML. The user would see this as a web page.

Depending on your ISP, this may or may not be an option. Personally, I've only experiemented with this on a small level. However, I know that's it's used heavily by some. You can find their stories and ideas at

http://thedbcommunity.com/inet/

2. The more traditional way to do this is to have your ISP create a database account on their webserver. If it's a Unix shop, they generally have MySQL installed or possibly FireBird (the open-source version of InterBase).

In any event, you then obtain, install, and set up an ODBC driver that points to your database on their server. Once you've done that, you can then use Paradox for Windows as a front-end for populating and maintaining the data on the server.

To process and show results, though, you'd have to use the tools provided by the ISP, such as PHP, Perl, VBScript, ASP, or whatever. This means you'll be learning a few new tools.

The advantage of the first meth0d is that you get to use Paradox as your development environment. The downside is that most ISP aren't open to installing strange software. Or they'll charge you for it.

The disadvantage of the second approach is that you have to learn a lot of new tools; however, it's not limited to a Windows-only ISP and learning new stuff isn't always a bad thing.

There are a lot of related issues that I've completely glossed over. However, I hope this helps lay the groundwork.

-- Lance

 

[LWB]

Lance,

Thanks, that is very helpful.

Lynn