dbWeb 1.0 and Cold Fusion Pro 1.5

Is all that glitters gold? Maybe! Database connectivity to your World Wide Web server is an idea that shines, but you can run into difficulties if you intend to use the available advanced options, especially if you aren't fluent in database programming. But don't worry. You can create simple online access to information-and more complex data-interactivity-with a little effort and perhaps some help from your database administrator.

When do you need database connectivity? If you have information to distribute to sources such as clients or prospective customers outside your company, connecting your corporate database to the Web can be a golden solution. For example, if you want to let customers search through and order from your catalogue of 10,000 electronics parts, using a database to automate the process is far easier than designing 10,000 custom pages. Besides, in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programming, manually creating that many pages is daunting, to say the least. You also want to let your customers insert their own information into your database.

Database connectivity opens access to data across the Web with a minimum of programming. By standard methods, if you want to present information besides buttons and pointers on a page, you must manually create the page and tell the Web server where to put the information, which information to use, and how you want the information displayed. Even automated word-processor conversion programs can be a pain for lengthy and complicated documents, and if you want custom designs for things such as catalogs, you have to program every line. Database connectivity packages eliminate tedious programming by automating HTML page generation and dynamically creating pages according to the data being viewed. What's more, the same techniques of data entry and retrieval will let you support online conferencing and automate activity tracking on your site. As a result, you can see who's doing what and where.

Two of the leading database-access tools on the Web are dbWeb from Aspect Software Engineering and Cold Fusion from Allaire. We won't do a head-to-head comparison of the two here, although both more or less do the same thing, because they are fundamentally different programs. dbWeb is ideally suited for automated data display and retrieval, and Cold Fusion is best as a tool for data entry, custom display programming, and advanced data retrieval.

You can easily go crazy with all the advanced features available in both Cold Fusion and dbWeb, so don't overdo it. We've seen several examples on the Web where going feature-crazy drags down system performance tremendously, so please exhibit some self-restraint when using these packages.

dbWeb 1.0
dbWeb supports HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) servers,including Alibaba, EMWAC HTTPS, Netscape Communications Server,Process Software's Purveyor, O'Reilly's Website, and others conformingto HTML standards. It also supports several databases, includingMicrosoft SQL Server 4.2, Sybase, Oracle, Microsoft Access, andothers supporting 32-bit Open Database Connectivity (ODBC).

dbWeb installation and setup is straightforward: You can load it fromfloppy or from an archive file that you can find at Aspect's Website. The key that Aspect gives you will let you unlock dbWebwith either a standard license or for a 30-day trial period. Theprogram prompts you for information about your Web server andautomatically loads Microsoft's ODBC Setup utility (32-bit, version2.5). You must configure dbWeb yourself according to your databaseneeds by installing the proper drivers. You also have a dbWebService that is set to manual by default, but you'll probablywant to change it to automatic to save time if you have to rebootyour system.

Configuration
Once you have dbWeb up and running, you can launch the dbWeb Administrator. It will greet you withone of the package's best features: its clean and easy-to-usegraphical interface, which you can see in screen 1. This program'sforte is data presentation, which makes it an excellent Web datavisualization tool. With it, you can make your data availableon the Web without any CGI or HTML programming in hardly any timeat all. If you want to customize your site, setting up your datawill take a little longer. In that case, you'll need to designyour own, more static HTML pages.

Basically, you tell dbWeb wherethe data is by defining an ODBC data source and an automated wizardsteps you through the setup routine. You can use predefined setupsfor viewing data, called schemas, that tell dbWeb how to organizeand present information in HTML pages, or you can design yourown setups with the schema editor. Most of dbWeb's magic occurswhen it generates custom HTML pages on the fly.

Schemas are thegateways between the user and the data. With them, you tell dbWebthe name of your data source and which columns of your data youwant to display. You can select whether to display your data asa tabular listing, free form, in a single record, or in some otherfashion. You can also select what relationships you'll use. Arelationship, or Drilldown SmartLink as dbWeb calls it, lets yoube more specific about the data you retrieve and drill down fromgeneral topics to exact information.

For example, if you startwith a general topic about all the consulting firms in Colorado,you can drill down to those with more than 100 people, then downagain to the managers at those firms. All this data can be inyour central database, or you can actually drill across to otherdatabase files, other schemas, or other servers on your network,or even across the Web to a specific Universal Resource Locator(URL).

Once you format the schema, you're ready to begin queryingyour data. When you access your database home page, dbWeb willintervene and present the screen that you designed in the schema.You can enter search criteria and dbWeb will return a custom pagewith the information you requested and links to more specificdata. All this occurs without any CGI or HTML programming. Youcan navigate the pages as if they had been designed for each entry,even though they're completely dynamic.

Features
The Schema Editorallows you a great deal of latitude in presenting and enteringdata, but recognize that in dbWeb this flexibility presents asecurity risk. If you let some users insert, update, and deleteinformation from the database, your data is unfortunately opento anyone who wants to access it. To ensure some security, youcan disable data actions and allow only queries, but then youlose a level of interactivity. Another solution is to set up passwordprotection for data entry with a custom HTML page. This actionseparates data entry from retrieval, so you can maintain somesecurity.

dbWeb supports most basic query operations availablein standard databases, including Query by Example (QBE), joins,tables (for multiple tables within a single data source), andcomputed data (deriving new columns from existing data). You canenhance your data presentation with special fonts, layouts, andgraphics, and multi-record forms by designing a custom DatabaseFormat File (DBX), which lets you further alter the look and feelof your QBE entries and results (e.g., tables and free form andtabular listings).

Looking Good
dbWeb is an outstanding visualizationtool. It lets you put your database online quickly with a decent-lookinginterface, minimum hassle, and no programming. The documentationis excellent-you can find it online in Microsoft Word format-andthe program provides enough sample files to show you its features.We had some problems with initial setup and with loading our owndata, but Aspect's technical-support people stepped us through.The program does, however, have room for improvement. Some datasecurity features and multimedia handlers would be nice so thatyou could present graphics and other data with your text, includingpictures in catalogs or pointers to downloadable files. You couldcustom-code such features into your pages, but that action woulddefeat the purpose of this nicely interactive and automated program.This package is great if you hope to increase your productivityover the Web by making information available to clients and customers,especially if you don't want to get bogged down by heavy-dutyCGI and HTML programming.

Cold FusionPro 1.5 Beta 4
Cold FusionPro Beta 4.0 (CFP) installs like most other programs these days,using the standard interface that the Install-It and Install-Shieldprograms made popular. If you are not familiar with these, theysimply lead you through a series of straightforward questionsso that you can supply directory information and other necessaryconfiguration parameters.

The installation tries to detect whichHTTP server(s) you have installed. We installed CFP on NetscapeCommerce Server 1.1, Netscape Communications Server 1.1, and MicrosoftInternet Server Beta 2.

On the Netscape installations, CFP failedto recognize the server, and we had to supply the informationmanually. CFP recognized the Microsoft Internet Server withouta problem, and the Internet Server configuration supplied theappropriate information.

Configuration
Once you install the software,you need to configure the ODBC drivers. CFP gives you the latest32-bit ODBC drivers (2.5 as of release Beta 4.0). If you havea previous version of CFP, all your published ODBC datasourcesare updated to System datasources. This lets you have a singledata source name (DSN) to work with all users of a given machine,rather than having each user set up his or her own ODBC datasources. CFP lets you test your ODBC configuration beforeyou exit the configuration program (a nice touch!).

CFP supportsa variety of HTTP servers, including O'Reilly Website 1.0b, EMWACHTTPS 0.96, Process Software's Purveyor 1.0, Netscape CommunicationsServer 1.1, and Microsoft Internet Server. As for databases, CFPsupports MS SQL Server 6.0, MS Access, MS FoxPro, Borland Paradox,Oracle, Dbase, and other 32-bit ODBC-compliant DBMSs that complywith Level 1 of the ODBC API and support core SQL grammar.

Features
Whenyou have the ODBC driver and CFP configured, it's time to servesome data. CFP doesn't provide graphical data layout tools asdbWeb does. Instead CFP focuses on reliability and control. Ifyou are familiar with CGI or have written a script or two, youknow that managing all the scripts and the way they interact canbe more trouble than they're worth. CFP recognizes this and offersone serious, industrial strength, turbo-charged, longhooded CGIscript that is suited to a variety of data input/retrieval tasks.By having one script service all the requests, CFP approachesa level of reliability that can only be described as bulletproof.Full SQL Server logs or some other configuration problem generallycauses the occasional errors you find. We have tested CFP formonths and are currently using it live on our Web site. We have had few problems that we can directly attribute to CFP.

That said, CFP is not perfect. We didencounter some problems with the Netscape Communications Serverconfiguration on a particularly busy system. The machine exhibitedslow-downs that we traced to a named pipes problem. However, thetech support at Allaire was superior: They installed several trackingprograms to determine the exact problem with Netscape. When wewrote this article, they were still working to solve the problem.

Also, in all that test time, CFP never crashed on us. It alsoran well on a machine that was not nearly as busy, and we currentlyhave CFP running on Microsoft Internet Server with high volumeand no problems.

Another minor difficulty with CFP is that ifyou are not familiar with SQL syntax, you face a steep learningcurve. If, on the other hand, you understand select statementsand groupby statements, you'll appreciate CFP's power. You havecomplete control over the what, where, and why of data displayon your Web site. If all you want is to collect information, understandingSQL is helpful but not necessary.

Data Input and Output
CFP usesstandard HTML forms to insert and update records in a databasetable. The supplied validation rules are extensive, so you canbe in control of how your forms are filled out. You can requirean entry to a given field to be a float, integer, date, or ina particular numeric range. You can also timestamp input recordsand log Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, client names, and eventhe browser type that people use to access your Web site, allwithout writing a scrap of code.

When it comes to displaying data,CFP is in a class by itself. If letting your clients simply queryyour database and display the results is all you want, CFP cando it with ease.

However, this capability is only a little ofwhat you can do. How about conditional branching on the fly forcustomizing data sent to the user? How about queries designedto dynamically create custom menus or fill list boxes and documentlists? (For an example of list boxes and document lists, go toDropZone.) Thanks to CFP's complete controlover output formatting, you can do such things as create a listof hot links to other Web sites based on a query result. We can'tsay enough about this flexibility: Every time we think of somethingnew to try with CFP, it easily accommodates us.

But wait-there'smore! CFP supports stored procedures and lets you easily passdata to them. You can also enable the debugger, which displaysmore information than most people care to know.

The interestingaspect is that the information appears with the query resultson the subsequent Web page. All the information you need is onthe same screen. Pretty slick, right?

Support Lines
Allaire providesexcellent support for Cold Fusion Pro. If you are on the Web (andif you aren't, you're probably thinking about it), Allaire providesa terrific Web site devoted to CFP. Documents, discussion groups,and copious amounts of how-to's and working examples populatetheir site. If that's not enough, Allaire also has excellent telephonesupport and a complete set of examples in the CFP distribution.In addition, the manual gives step-by-step instructions for avariety of applications.

From data collection to data display,CFP does it all. If you have visited our Web site, you'll noticethat we have an automated subscription form, a searchable NT-specificWeb site list, a searchable NT specificsoftware listing, and a searchable NT-related press-release database, just to namea few spots. All these are done with CFP and stored in a varietyof SQL server databases. We are now free to query the data withany ODBC-compliant client (e.g., VFP,VB 4.0, Access) or servethe information on the Internet either via the Web, email, orboth.

Testing Platforms
Database servers: (Microsoft SQL Server 6.0)
NEC RISCServer 2200 with 64MB of RAM and a 2GB SCSI-2 disk
Telos Pentium-133 with 64MB of RAM and a 2GB SCSI-2 disk.

HTTP servers:
Telos 486/66 with 32MB of RAM running Netscape Communications Server version 1.1
Telos Pentium-120 with 64MB of RAM and a 1.3GB SCSI-2 disk running Microsoft Internet Server
Telos Pentium-133 with 64MB of RAM and a 2GB SCSI-2 disk running Netscape Commerce Server version 1.1