Re: Oracle 8 Enterprise on NT--web questions

>My work has purchased an Oracle contract that includes just about everything
>Oracle makes, but only Enterprise 8 has been released to us so far. (Don't
>ask me why . . . .)
>
>I'm using Enterprise on NT Server 4.
>
>My question is, what is the best way to connect the database to the web? I
>have access to Netscape Enterprise Server, and of course NT comes with IIS.
>I would prefer to use IIS since it is built in (so to speak), but all of my
>users use Netscape Communicator. I *think* .asp pages can be made to work
>with Communicator, but I'm not sure. . . .
>
>Does anyone have a suggestion about the path I should follow? Netscape
>Enterprise & Javascript to connect to the Oracle Database, or IIS and some
>form of J-Script or Javascript that will allow me to create .asp pages that
>will connect to the Oracle database and work in Netscape?
>
>Please remember that I currently do not have access to Oracle Web
>Application Server (or any other Oracle software, for that matter).
>
>Thanks
>--Michael

I'm kind of new to the Oracle-Web connection, but this is my understanding of the way it works. If I am in error, perhaps someone can correct me...

I think that ASP pages are only for IIS servers. From an ASP page, you can access Oracle, but using ODBC. (The stuff I have seen has said to use MS ODBC drivers, not Oracle's) The ODBC drivers would be installed on the web server. I do not know what Netscape uses to provide this kind of capability.

The ASP code provides HTML code that goes exactly where the ASP page is on the page. From this, I would conclude that ASP pages are (going to be) good where the primary focus is on the HTML/Web aspect; ie, a static page with a little DB interaction. If you have a lot of DB interaction, this might become very inefficient since you will need to write a query/package for each field on the web page. Very heavy DB forms can be done with the Oracle Application Server. The way it is designed, you can do anything in it that can be done in HTML, but it requires DB activity to get the form, even if the form is really static. However, that is usually implemented via packages, so it is very efficient from a data transmission point of view.

It doesn't matter what web server you use with their browser. What matters is their browser - there are a few differences between Netscape and MS Explorer, but what more of a difference is how they have their brower set up (ie, cookies enabled, Java enabled etc)

Hope this helps a little

Dan Hekimian-Williams Received on Fri Nov 27 1998 - 16:16:07 CET