April 1998
Building Web Databases
Automating Web Databases with SimpleDB
By Paul Helinski
While most sites need some sort of database, many Web developers cringe at the thought of the complex configurations associated with a relational database. If your needs are simple, then Paul suggests that SimpleDB may be your answer.
A Web Interface for REQ
By Bryant Durrell
Req, a popular and freely available request-tracking system, lets you send requests through email, and record, track, and manage those requests in various ways. Bryant's interface lets you access req from the Web.
A Portable Interface to Web Databases
By Mike Miller
The DBD/DBI database-abstraction libraries allow you to port Perl applications to different databases, and to open connections to one or more databases for any supported vendor. Mike walks you through this Perl library and shows how you can easily pass data from one database to another.
C O L U M N S :
Webmaster's Domain
Sun's Java Servlet API promises portability, reliability, and improved performance over CGI. Lincoln D. Stein realizes these dynamically loaded modules are also quite reminiscent of Tony Sander's Plexus.
Visual Designer
While frames have been abused to the point of nausea, they can also be used in unusual ways to achieve interesting effects. Lynda Weinman shows you how.
Doing Justice to the Web
Similar to shrink-wrap licenses, "Web-wrap" licenses spell out the terms and conditions under which you can use the site. But are they legal? Catherine Sansum Kirkwood exams it in depth.
Database Developer
To say that a Web-database developer needs to know just HTML and SQL oversimplifies the issue. Ken North looks at the different implementations for stored procedures in SQL, and Transact-SQL in particular.
Programming with Perl
This month Randal L. Schwartz takes a different approach to maintaining state, while presenting his latest program: a small, multithreaded Web server.
Java Alley
Bruce Eckel wraps up his discussion of the Swing library and introduces some of the more interesting components, including sliders and progress bars, tables, trees, and tabbed panes.
D E P A R T M E N T S :
Script Junkie
Distributed Java applications can take several seconds to download. So Carl Dreher has devised two methods for creating an animated clock that informs the user that an applet is loading. One is Netscape Navigator specific, the other supports Navigator and Internet Explorer. Both methods use JavaScript.
Lab Note
Knowing your tools is one thing. Knowing how to combine them is quite another. Arthur Casale shows how to combine HTML, Java, Active Server Pages, and Access 97 to create a database application.
HTML Coder
With different media, file formats, and browser types to contend with, embedding multimedia in your Web site is no easy feat. Philip De Lancie examines the EMBED tag and shows its various uses when including Shockwave, RealPlayer, and Beatnik files on your site.
The Home Page
Editor-in-Chief, Michael Floyd talks about "Virtual Global Cooling."
News & Notes
The Mouse That Roared.
The Last Page
Michael Swaine talks "In a Rational World."
