Re: Windows PC to Oracle w/o SQL*Net?

stowe_at_mcs.net wrote:
: > B540JC_at_wbv1.sna.ks.boeing.com (John R. Call - Boeing, Wichita) writes:
: > Our problem: Since the logon program is running on the individual
: > workstations, how do we access Oracle without having to buy and install
: > SQL*Net on each workstation? The only thought I had was to use some
: > kind of program to program communication, where the logon program on the
: > workstation would talk to a program (logon server) running on one of our
: > SQL*Net enabled servers (see below). Any thoughts? Does anyone know
: > how to code the program to program connection? Is there some way to
: > access Oracle from the Windows PC WITHOUT having to install SQL*Net on
: > each PC?
: >>>>

If your Oracle is on a UNIX server and what you want is to register things like login/-out etc. there are several thing that can be done quite easily. One way would be to send an e-mail to a special user on the server - the mail system in UNIX can be configured to run a program whenever a certain user receives mail etc. Another possibility is to use ftp: on the UNIX you'll need a program that does two things in a loop - 1) reads a FIFO file, then 2) updates the database. This can be in a shell script, even. On the clients, you use ftp to copy a file (containing whatever info you'll send to the server) to the FIFO file on the server. The trick here is, that when you try to read a FIFO file, you'll wait indefinitely until some other process writes something in it.

: What, exactly, is your hesitation to putting SQL*Net on each PC?

My guess is that the price for SQL*Net compared to the simplicity of the task is daunting.

Jan Andersen
(jaa_at_adm.dtu.dk) Received on Thu Mar 28 1996 - 00:00:00 CET