Putting Databases on the Web (Summary)

[Andrew J. Mutch]

The following is a summary of responses I recieved regarding my question
of how to allow patrons to query an Access Database by way of an HTML form
with responses also produced in HTML.

A popular suggestion was Allaire's Cold Fusion.  A number of people had
used Cold Fusion to provide web access to databases.
Allaire's Cold Fusion is at: http://www.allaire.com
Pricing: $495 (for Access, FoxPro, etc.) and $995(Oracle, MS SQL Server,
etc.) - although there were those that had recieved institutional
discounts

Examples of those who had used Cold Fusion include:

http://www.way.peachnet.edu/library/holdings/persrch.htm

http://msl1.ursus.maine.edu/ (with Visual FoxPro 5.0)

Several people also suggested that I use Claris' FileMaker 4.0 Pro, which
would require converting the Access Database, but had the ability to
instantly publish the database.
Price: $200.00

http://www.claris.com/index.html

Microsoft's Active Server Pages was also recommended.  Using ASP requires
knowledge of Visual Basic and it was recommended that I acquire Visual
Studio or Visual Interdev if I wanted to go that route.  A variation on
this theme used Visual Basic and a SQL database.  An example of this
solution is at:

http://seeh.spl.org/


Other suggestions included:

Tango for Access: http://www.everyware.com/

Database2Net by SiteSoft: http://www.database2net.com/
Professional Ver. - $349.95
Lite Ver. - $149.95

Using linux to run MSQL with an interface created using perl or javascript

The Bibliographical Center for Research has worked with SilverPlatter to
create databases that can be accessed with SilverPlatter's WinSPIRS or
WebSPIRS interefaces.  BCR converts the databases for free for their
members and at-cost for non-profits.  A demo is available at:

http://forge.silverplatter.com/cgi-bin/webspirs.cgi

Contact Ellen Fox at efox at bcr.org

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question.  I'm always impressed by
the depth of knowledge and willingness to help that the list members
display.  Special thanks to Ernest Perez who provided me with a lot of
details that saved me additional searching!

I think I'll check out Cold Fusion and FileMaker Pro and let you all know
when I'm up on the Web!

Andrew Mutch
Northville District Library
Northville, MI