Re: Which SDK for web applications with Oracle

"Sönke Petersen" <sk.petersen_at_gmx.de> wrote in message news:b6ug9k$85n$1_at_news.mch.sbs.de...
> Hi,
>
> I admit this question cannot be answered in an easy manner:
>
> I'm looking for a SDK to develop a web application with access to an
Oracle
> database.
> The application will be a frontend for i/o of data into the database in
the
> first step.
>
> I have in mind some sort of SDK with properties like the MS access
database,
> mainly the form editor.
> I want to create forns easily, the best way would be if I could create
forms
> based on data structures yet defined in the database.
>
> If such a SDK would be available for free I'd like it even more....
>
> Regards,
> Sönke
>
> P.S.: we didn't deside which programming language to use right now.

While it might not be free, I used the Visual Studio languages for my application. The web server (Microsoft IIS) uses Active Server Pages to call the database. Instead of using ADO (ActiveX Data Objects), I wrote the database routines in custom COM components using OLE DB calls from Visual C++ version 6.0. By using a component object (DLL) for the web's database access instead of ADO, I eliminated the overhead of ADO for the web server.

The administration area, which was the phase after the web program, currently uses Visual Basic 6.0 and ADO. Because this area isn't used by 100's of people at one time, the extra load is minimal. I used ADO instead of OLE DB because it seems that OLE DB is dying out, and most Microsoft programmers are using ADO. I was going to run the administration area via DCOM, but from what I've read about .NET, DCOM (like OLE DB) is also dying out. I'm going to wait until Visual Studio 2003 .NET comes out to look at the situation again.

As to creating forms easily, you can create webforms easily in Visual Interdev, which is basically a powerful HTML/ASP editor. It needs Frontpage Extensions loaded on the web server, though, to group all the .HTM/.ASP files into one "project". Otherwise, you can use the files individually, as I do.

I'd recommend against doing "tests" with Visual Studio against MS Access. It's not always the case that if your routine works with Access, that it will work with Oracle (or even SQL Server)! Also keep in mind your Oracle updates; I had a nasty problem where my DLL called a PL/SQL stored procedure, which returned a value. The value was not null-terminated, and I was getting some "bad" values. I turned my code inside out, but couldn't find a problem, so I forced a null into the string so I could process the value. I found out later that this was a bug in the Oracle Provider for OLE DB, and Oracle had released a newer version of the driver.

There's plenty of other solutions out there, but I figured I'd share the route that I took. You can also use the Oracle solution; the Oracle Application Server and the HTP, HTF, and OWA packages for dynamic HTML and session state handling.

Hope that helps,

-Thomas Received on Tue Apr 08 2003 - 12:51:09 CDT