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The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
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  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
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Help for a Dummy!

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    Help for a Dummy!

    Is there an easy "dummies" guide to setting up a web application using A5 v6. I have looked at the help file but still feel that this help file is a little complicated for a complete beginner (as I am) in web based applications. It would be nice to have a "10" step guide, listing in idiot proof statements exactly what to do by stage. I need Stage by stage instructions and above all explanations of what is going on in the creation process. For example, what comes first? the database application locally or the web based files on my server. Setting up the server conections is also confusing. How do I set up forms on the web and using CGI scripts. I find this aspect very confusing. I would appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.

    Kind regards
    Howard (UK)

    #2
    RE: Help for a Dummy!

    Howard, have you looked at the Web Publishing Reference. There is no need at all to use CGI. This doument should answer your questions.

    Lenny Forziati
    Vice President, Internet Products and Technical Services
    Alpha Software Corporation

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Help for a Dummy!

      Have you looked at the Web Publishing Tutorial?

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Help for a Dummy!

        Thanks for the reference. However that is my point. All I want is a quick reference not a massive wordy document. A 10 point broad heading reference of how to build a database application website would be ideal. Is this request impossible?

        Cheers
        Howard

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Help for a Dummy!

          PACE Training (www.PaceTraining.com) has a nice manual for a jumpstart to the web server.

          (Full disclosure: I'm a trainer for PACE but wouldn't benefit from your purchase of this book.)

          If you're coming to the Alpha User's Conference, you might consider taking the Web jumpstart class and getting this manual as part of the deal.

          - Steve
          -Steve
          sigpic

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Help for a Dummy!

            Thanks but I am based in the UK

            Cheers
            Howard

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Help for a Dummy!

              Essential Concepts and Terms
              A web application is a series of pages that are displayed in a browser.
              Pages can either be .HTML pages (if they are static), or .A5W pages (if they display information from a database, or have Xbasic code in them). Alpha Five contains an HTML editor for creating .HTML and .A5W pages.
              .A5W pages can contain components.
              Alpha Five allows you to create three different types of components: Grid (to display and edit data in a database), Dialog (to display a form to prompt for information), and GridLinker (to link multiple Grid components in a master-detail relationship)
              Alpha Five has builders that allow you to create components without having to do any programming.
              Components are reusable - the same component can be placed on multiple .A5W pages. Read more about components.
              Getting Started
              You are probably anxious to build your first page that displays data from a database. Here are the steps to get started:

              First create a Grid component using the Grid builder. See tutorial
              Next, create a new .A5W page using the HTML editor. See tutorial
              Insert your Grid component on the page. See tutorial
              Click the Live Preview button on the toolbar (it's the button with the lightening bolt).

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Help for a Dummy!

                Thanks for your help. This is exactly what I wanted. The broad headings of each stage in the process.

                I use A5 for manipulation data that contains 2 million records. It is brilliant for this. As yet I have not used it to produce applications on a large scale yet. I have always used Access before for this but want to transfer to A5 and I also have an idea to place a search application on the Web. How secure is the data on the Web. How do I stop people from spidering/stealing the data on the web.

                Thanks again

                Howard

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Help for a Dummy!

                  Howard

                  The best way to handle the data for a web app is to place the data in a path that is outside of the path/s available from the page path. If the pages are in a webroot path and sub folders under that path, just put the data somewhere else and disable directory browsing. The only way to get to the data is then through a page and you can control what data is shown.

                  Jerry

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