Converting databases to HTML

[Walter Lewis]

ISN wrote:
> We made quite good experiences with a product called Cold Fusion. It is a
> sort of interface software between SQL-databases and the web. It is a
> rather cheap and simple to use tool and we utilize it to make an Access-DB
> (Version 6.0, that was before Windows 95!!) searchable from the WWW. You
> can give a look to our service at http://www.isn.ethz.ch . Note that all
> pages except the home page and a few reference pages are dynamically
> generated from an ACCESS 6.0 DB via the Cold Fusion Interface. The results
> are most satisfactory.

We acquired Cold Fusion about a year ago to manage the online server (as
distinct from one time conversion) of a number of PC based databases
(http://www.hhpl.on.ca).  At the time we reviewed it against BestWeb and
dbWeb.  dbWeb was a non-starter (Microsoft now *gives* it away), BestWeb
has come back in a second version and ColdFusion has been through two
upgrades.  The flexibility of ColdFusion won it our business at that
time, and it has gotten considerably easier to use in the latest
incarnations.

We're debating buying the second upgrade vs. the competition which is
increasingly intense.  Microsoft has promised (now *there*'s a surprise)
dramatic improvements in ease of development with their next round of
tools which *may* include MS Access 97 itself (in manufacturing, but not
shipping ttbomk) and the beta version of Internet Studio (53 Mb download
if you can take it).  Borland and others are shipping these in their
comparable toolsets.

If you run an NT server that can run server side java, my understanding
is that there are major initiatives on the java/odbc front (a separate
thread perhaps?)

The key issues are ODBC compliance, flexibility of output (labels,
sorts, markup, error handling etc), and ease of use.  Here's hoping that
some additional effort will get put into the latter.

Just in passing, I should note that we're also investigating Fulcrum
Technologies' Surfboard which appears to offer better handling/Indexing
of long/memo fields, and Blue Angel Technologies' Meta Data Manager
which is designed to support GILS/Z39.50 on NT using ODBC.

Walter Lewis
Deputy Chief/Systems		WebMaster
Halton Hills Public Libraries	HALINET