Guidance Please

[skunk]

Hi,

I have an application that will allow me to use an Ocx file and vb project (vendor supplied) to access information in a vendors proprietary database.

What I would like to do is port that vb project to the web. I would like to be able to have the ability for people to access a web page and essentially click "update" and have the server poll the vendors database for new information. (their vb project does this)

My main concern is that the people coming to this site will not have the Ocx file that I do and I don't want them to have to download anything for this to work.

I would like them to just come to the site click update and have the data "show up". I would like the server to do most of the work as there is alot of data and most of the people who will use this are on slow connections.

Should I use an activex control or ?????? I'm very new to this.

I would greatly appreciate any information or tips.

Thanks a bunch.

[Paylo]

Is this application you are creating server side? If your user only needs to see the end result which is the data, then your IIS server is the only computer which needs to have your COM file registered.

so it would work like this:

1) user accesses website, and access asp page
2) server creates the COM object
3) COM object gets the data and this is written to a static HTML page
4) User gets the data as HTML

Hope this is helpful to you

[skunk]

So if I understand you correctly then I don't even need ActiveX. All I need to do is use com.

???

BTW...Thank you very much for your reply.

[Paylo]

Hehe, all the MS names are kind of confusing. But let me sort it out (i'm taking a course at U on this stuff at the moment).
ActiveX is a kind of COM (activeX = OCX).
COM is just a component architecture, so its a general name for lots of stuff. DLL files are also COM files.