ASP,CGI,TCP/IP? I'm lost :(

**FirstKnight** · Jan 12th, 2000, 04:02 PM

Could someone please explain to me how this all work? All I want to do is to display data on a web page and have a program that can remotly change this data over a TCP/IP connection. Everyone talks about CGI, ASP etc. but I have never used these before. Is there a website or something else that might explain this to me. Also if someone could maybe send me a demo project that uses these I would appreciate it.

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Today is the last day of your past

**HarryW** · Jan 12th, 2000, 06:09 PM

I'm working on ASP with VBScript right now myself. ASP is Active Server Pages - you probably already knew that much

. It is a method of processing scripts written for webpages.

What ASP does is to interpret scripts (VBScript, JavaScript, Perl, and others) and send a page in .asp format to the browser in pure HTML. It works out what the code will produce, and sends only HTML. That is server-side scripting. It is possible to o client-side scripting too, but you probably wouldn't do that with database handling.

You could check out www.aspdeveloper.com, or numerous other sites. Or get yourself a book on it - you'll probably need it

I've been doing it for a couple of weeks now, and it's starting to sink in.

Good luck with it anyway.

Harry

[This message has been edited by HarryW (edited 01-13-2000).]

**lychew** · Jan 12th, 2000, 06:13 PM

What you can do is to create ASP or CGI pages on the web server. You can use any connection string to connect to the PC where the database resides in the LAN. You should have some buttons on the web page that will trigger SQL statement that will update, modify or delete the records in the database.
So when you access the web page, you can update the information in the database. If this is not what you want, you might want to try RAS in Winnt4.0 which is a service.

ASP goes something like this:

<%
if request.form("")="Submit" then
set dbobj= server.createobject("ADODB.Connection")
application("ConnectString")="Driver=SQL Server,Server=....."
dbconn.open application("ConnectString")
Set oRs = server.createobject("ADODB.Recordset")
strSQL="" 'statement to add,modify,update,delete
dbconn.execute strSQL
end if
%>
<html>
//this will be the interface...
</html>

**Clunietp** · Jan 13th, 2000, 02:03 AM

I like that FirstKnight: Today is the last day of your past

**FUBAR** · Jan 13th, 2000, 07:23 AM

Microsoft FrontPage98 makes this rather easy to implement. You can create the ASP scripts using the Frontpage editor.

You will need to create an ODBC data source.
Start - Settings - Control Panel - ODBC 32:
Select the System DSN tab and Click Add
Select the service providor (ie. Microsoft Access Driver)
Click Finish
Give the Datasource a name (Keep it short and simple)
The click source locate the data source (ie. C:\Mydata\Data.mdb)
Check out the Options and Advanced buttons to see if you want to change anything there.
Click OK.
Now you can connect your Frontpage98 documents to the data source. You'll have to read the help files for how to do this.

P.S. On Windows NT Server running IIS 3.0 you need to run ASP.EXE I don't remember which CD it's on (ie. NT Server, Frontpage98, NT Optionpack 4)
Good luck

**Clunietp** · Jan 13th, 2000, 10:42 AM

Frontpage/Visual Interdev is not recommended if you want to keep your source code neat. Those editors hack up your code into unreadable, unworkable code if you implement any kind of slightly complicated statements.....also you don't need to use ODBC, you can use ADO objects directly from ASP pages....

**lychew** · Jan 13th, 2000, 12:40 PM

I agree with clunietp...
ODBC slows down your connection to database. ADO will be a better choice. Talk about Visual interdev, if you are not familiar with it, you can easily mixed up the code in server and local. Cause you can choose to save your work locally then synchronise it with the server. Some times it adds unnesasary codes in it.

**FirstKnight** · Jan 13th, 2000, 02:44 PM

Thanx guys. I did the decent thing and went out and bought a very thick book called 'Using IIS4 - Special Edition'. I browsed through it and there is quit a lot about ASP and ADO. Looks like I'm gonna hit the books this weekend. Like we say in this part of the world..."If all else fail, read the manual"

**Clunietp** · Jan 13th, 2000, 03:26 PM

I recommend ASP in 21 days (or equivalent beginner book)

I've used that and with half of that book I was able to get a web based app working very nicely, it teaches you the stuff you need to know.

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