Internet Databases - Do you know how to create?

Hi Folks,

Looking for recommendations...

Got a real good book on creating and maintaining databases online using VB6. I'm only on page 3 right now, yep I do have a two year old at the house. Anyway, I thought I would solicit input from you all on how to go about implementing this database. The primary information will be customer info. Things like Name, address, phone, email, etc. I would like to have some level of automation using VB, automation meaning being able to automatically populate VB with this information and then manipulate it.

Just chime in if you have experience doing this. I would like to learn from your mistakes, and minimalize mine, especially once I commit to setting up the server.

Thanks folks,
Sal

Try talking to 'cander' on this one. I asked him a similar question a long while back and he was very helpful

Ooooohhhh, you don't want to go near Cander - I heard he's contageous. ;)

Right, this is what I do at work most of the time - 3 words :
Request
Response
Com

That's how you do it ! :)
You have a client side html page to show the data,
a server side asp web page to do your processing (checking textboxes before adding the entry to a database, or maybe a call to refresh the database information and write this out to another client side web page),
then finally your dll written in vb to do all the processing & talking to the database.

Attached is a little example of how I work with this at the moment. It isn't secure / safe to call the database from the web page directly, and this is the best way to go about it.

Do a search for "request" and "response" as I explained these in one of my past posts & it'll help exaplain the sample.

Cheers ! :cool:

I'm getting the feeling alex may have done this sort of thing before ....;)

Just once or twice ;) Since I got this new job about 5 months ago, this is what I deal with 90% of the time. :cool:

Plus I need all the replies I can post to get near your post count, how'd you overtake so quickly :mad: :p

Ah there was a while there when I just sat on the forums all day looking for things to solve.
It wasnt to get my post count up, I just had nothing better to do.

Well I did have work to do but I didnt want to do any :)

Hey Alex,

Thanks for the info, hadn't had time to go online until now to view the responses. I will unzip the zip, and zip my lip for now until I unzip the zip to see what's inside the zip. I'm on a trip, about to read your zip, sounds like a great tip. Ok, ok, I'll quit... :p I really am on a trip though, nice when the hotels have HighSpeed Ethernet connections in the rooms, makes life really convenient.

Sal

Alex,

Woooo! Incredible code! Where do I start?

• Did you have to manually enter the entire VBScript or did VB automate all or some of this.
• Time permitting, could you kindly discuss each element of creating this program?
• In this zipped example, there is a Log file created. How do you interact with the results?
• ASP - Is this "Server Side" code?
• The data returned in the log, I assume is stored on the server. Is this assumption correct?

Thanks,
Sal

Hiya Sal !

Did you have to manually enter the entire VBScript or did VB automate all or some of this.
- sorry to say, I entered it all myself :D , if you're still reading & haven't been put off of this by me saying that, then let me tell you vbscript is easy peasy !!!

www.msdn.microsoft.com/scripting

is the site that'll help you with this (apart from these forums), the main thing to bear in mind are that there's only 1 variable (do you just do dim x rather than dim x as string for example), anything else you can look up at the above site to see whether scripting supports it (i.e. you can't use the API with script, but 80% of your normal vb oding will work).

Time permitting, could you kindly discuss each element of creating this program?
I plastered the vb dll with comments, so that parts sorted, the below paragraph might help you with explaining some more.
Over the weekend I'll plaster the rest with comments for you.

In this zipped example, there is a Log file created. How do you interact with the results?
- I take it you're on about the submit button in the html file ? Rather than writing to a file, it stores the information from this page into a database instead. Here's how it works (if you haven't done so already, please do a search on these forums for request & response posts I have done as 1 will explain this in more detail)...

Code:

---

<FORM Name="frmAddDatabaseEntry" Action="AddRecordProcessing.asp" Method="post" OnSubmit="return FormSubmitValidation();">

---

This is the main part that makes it work. I'll explain this more with comments, but the method bit says "okay, when the buttons clicked, send this page upto the following site - " the action part tells which page to send this to.

This second page (called from the above) is server-side and grabs all the information from the first page. This data is then passed as parameters to the vb dll, which in turn takes these values and writes them into a database.

read the last question below which is kinda linked to this part

ASP - Is this "Server Side" code?
- absolutly correct.
The main reasons for this are that asp (active server pages, which in English means a HTML page with a bit of vbscript shoved into the page) is supported on the server. If you write web pages with vbscript inside for client side pages, then Netscape won't recognise any of the code (only javascript - which is why I put a little javascript into the first page).

The second reason is that I can do more with vbscript than javascript - the Javascript makers purposly toned down / limited javascript with what it can do (otherwise you could be visiting a site which has a format C: script excecute on the web page's load event for example).

The data returned in the log, I assume is stored on the server. Is this assumption correct?
- Right again - you're getting good at this ;)

Here's a liittle example again (from the same project) which'll confuse you even more :D Basically, this code searches the database for records matching a search criteria the user typed in (i.e. I have a couple of pages asking the user what problems they want to search for as this is a call logging type project).

A vbscript loop goes through this database recordset, and for each record it finds, a HTML table row is created. When this is passed back to the request page, the user will see a table of entries where the problem description matches the typed in search criteria. Again, I'll do loads of comments so you can see whats properly going on over the weekend.

Jesus christ you really have done this stuff before :eek: :)

It's okay, you can call me Alex or Wig, no need for Jesus although my coding is exceptional I admit ! :D

Ahhh ASP, now theres something i know a little about. not much, but I did manage to make this site:

UK Clan List

Need any help let me know

well Here ya go, fully commented & I've even "altered" it so it 's a working sample!

Right, extract all the files to the same path - C:\ (needs to be this as I've hard coded the database path to be C:\. Then run the addnewproblem.htm file & bob's your uncle !

:cool:

uh... and here's the attachment

Hi Alex, ...And Everyone,

Just got home from a 4-day trip, and finally able to get back to the forum, err should say to the "VB-College". :p I think one could learn to become a fully versed developer by simply paying attention to the talent here.

I will study the information posted in your zip, and let it simmer in the deep recesses of the gray matter. Hopefully it won't burn anything. The possibilities here with VBScript and ASP seem to be limitless. While away, I read a very good book, VB6 and the Internet, or something like that. It had a bit of slop about something important, the planning methods for developing projects. It went on and on about something we all know how to do for the most part, but the real life examples were right on target. Implementing ADO vs. DAO and a discussion on ODBC preceeded ADO.

What I'm really wondering now is will VB.net make all of this extremely simple. I mean, code it in VB, in normal VB language, then put it on the server. This would be really cool for blossoming or budding, ahh, too femanine, let me see ahh, maturing developers, yea that's it, :rolleyes: developers like me. Although, I understand and appreciate the development of character, ...I walked 30 miles to school in the snow... to a brat who wants to be dropped of in a porsche.

Back to the "shed" Alex for more studying, ahh maturing that is.

Thanks for the comments in the code, I will study it and try to implement it in various practice applications. I'll be back with questions I'm certain. I'm also certain that with your depth of knowledge, that you'll have the answer.

Sincerely & with warm regards,
Sal