Re: Zero Client front end to Oracle

richmarin_at_earthlink.net (Rich) wrote in message news:<46e4ef1a.0306110633.a629c_at_posting.google.com>...
> I need to create a front end to an Oracle database. The company I work
> for requires that I use VB scripts. And they do not want anything
> installed on the end user's PC.
>
> The front end must be able to allow users to interactively ( thru pull
> down menus, combo boxes etc . . . ) create SQL statements. Then the
> SQL statements will query the back end Oracle tables. The data is to
> be retrieved and sent the Excel spreadsheets on the end users desktop.
>
> Can the above be done with Oracle and VB scripts on an intranet?

Can it be done? Depends on your (their) meaning of "anything".

There are third parties (DataDirect comes to mind) that will be more than happy to sell you a "thin" ODBC driver-- one that uses Oracle's wire protocol to connect to the database. From an application standpoint, you'd use ODBC or any of the API's on top of ODBC (ADO, DAO, RDO) just as normal. You would have to purchase a license for each end user to use this ODBC driver, however, and you would have to bundle this driver with your application.

You can write an ASP application that uses VBScript to generate HTML-based forms that comprise your application. This VBScript would be executed on the web server, so nothing would be installed on the client machine. If you want interactivity (i.e. things change when a user selects a certain option), that would have to be done via a client-side script (i.e. Javascript) embedded in your HTML pages.

If you go with the ASP application, it may require manual user intervention to get the data into Excel. You'd have to create a file (probably CSV) on the web server, create a page that allows the user to download the file, and then instruct the user to open Excel, navigate to the file they saved, and open it. I seem to recall that asktom.oracle.com has some information about using PL/SQL to write Excel files, rather than CSV files, which should allow Excel to automatically offer to open the file when it's downloaded.

Justin Cave Received on Wed Jun 11 2003 - 12:44:55 CDT