Amazon Web Services and VB6?

[Darkbob]

Anybody ever manage to use Amazon Web Services with VB6? In particular I see they offer something called SimpleDB for free. It looks like a great place to store your data. It looks like it's all set up for web developers but a VB6 app that could read and write to the cloud would be amazing.

I found an example in VBA for Excel but way too much work to convert it to VB6.

Anybody have a working project that I could look at or any suggestions on where to start?

Thanks!

--DB

[dilettante]

I've looked at this as well as Azure Storage. The Azure SQL has a chance of being used via ADO through recent SQL Server Client OLEDB Providers (not supported) and SQL Server ODBC Drivers (limited but works).

All of these are clunky from VB6, and if that VBA example is the one I'm thinking of - well bleh! Talk about some awful code. But you can't expect much from Excel hackers either, few of them are professional developers. I believe it is also obsolete, unless the guy keeps it updated now.

I agree we need some API libraries built for VB6. I'm not sure who will do it though because (a.) they are finicky things, (b.) the low-level protocols used change over time, and (c.) nobody wants to pay for a well-written, supported library. "Open sores" software won't cut it here, Cloud APIs are a moving target today and that requires more focused support than casual coders can offer.

Even Azure is a pain from .Net unless you use the add-on library Microsoft wrote and supports.

[dilettante]

One other consideration.

If you only need "cloud" storage, and if in reality you just need hosted-in-the-Internet storage, there are other options.


For example I found that in many cases I didn't actually need a common database that all copies of my program out there in the world needed to share. Instead it was quite possible to get by using a folder of files they could all read and another folder they could all read/write.

You can get hosted WebDAV service cheap (or free up to around 2GB of storage). Your program can acess this by (a.) mounting a WebDAV share as an ad-hoc temporary drive letter and then use regular VB6 I/O, or (b.) using a WebDAV client library.

Some free hosting even gives you one admin user and another regular user, so you can set different security on different folders. Usually getting more regular user accounts means paying, but in a lot of cases your program can get by with all instances sharing the one regular user account. The usual management of this user/pw applies (encryption, automatically retrieving and storing updated passwords, etc.).


Sometimes you do need a database (or at least database-like storage) though. I've been tinkering off and on with a scheme based on VB6 random files with an index. I just haven't gone far with it yet because I don't have a need yet.

[Darkbob]

Good point about a hosted shared folder. I have found that opening an MDB file through an internet connection is INCREDIBLY slow. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?

[dilettante]

No, you're probably not doing it wrong.

MDB files are not a good thing to open over the Internet. Since there are no "brains" at the other end your program has to fetch and store large amounts of data over the wire. The scheme was designed to work over LANs and works best on a local drive. Data loss and database corruption are high-probability events when you have a slow and unreliable network in the picture.

This is why you need to either use a client/server database on a database server, or use files along with some scheme that can target smaller pieces of the file for reading and updating (i.e. random access files). No question this will be more work though.

[Darkbob]

That's kinda what I thought. And so back to my question...

Anyone know how to get Amazon SimpleDB working with VB6?

[dilettante]

Have you read the Developer Guide yet?

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/Am...eveloperGuide/

All of the details are in there.

[Darkbob]

Have you read the Developer Guide yet?

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/Am...eveloperGuide/

All of the details are in there.

Yep. Read it through. Didn't understand much.

I'm still wondering if there's an example VB6 project out there I could look at. Anybody?

Thanks!

--DB

[dilettante]

Wow, no answers yet.

My guess would be that most of the people here don't do the kind of application development that needs a shared hosted database, or that those who do rely on something like hosted MySQL where the host allows open connections.

One thing I'd worry about is the state of flux of cloud database service APIs. Most are pretty good about trying to maintain backward compatibility for at least one prior version, but it still suggests you might need to be nimble about updates to your code.