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Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

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    Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

    I work with a company that has bi-annual conferences so they wanted to utilize web-based registration for those conferences. They initially wanted to try A5, but that wasn�t feasible so they used a product called Cvent. Don�t know much about Cvent, however, it does export the data in character delimited text format, making for a relatively easy transformation back into A5.

    Just the other day, I went to Adobe�s website where I read about their new, relatively inexpensive [$39] product, called Acrobat Approval 5.0, and wondered if it would work well with Alpha Five. The Adobe product allegedly makes it easy to create web based data input forms, which you can use to accept online information from users. It sounds perfect for things such as conference registration. The product information sheet says the software allows workgroups to quickly fill in, save, and approve electronic forms created in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).

    The documentation also states there is built in support for HTTP, XML, ODBC, WebDAV, and JavaScript. It says you can integrate Adobe PDF e-forms with Web browsers and back-end databases such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.

    Forgive my possible ignorance, but since A5 is ODBC compatible, could we use this apparently easy to use/set up product as a front end to retrieve data for an Alpha Five application?

    #2
    RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

    Since it is ODBC compatible I would think it would work, however the only way to know for sure is to try it.

    I've used Php4 and the cost is zero and there are many examples on the web.
    If you look at the file extension for this message board they are php3.
    Works for alphasoftware and just maybe the backend database is a5v4, maybe.

    Nick

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      #3
      RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

      I am still not sure what Php4, is it a programming language for web based applications?

      I just checked out my new copy of PC Magazine and they had a short review of web database programs, one of which was QuickBase by Intuit. Apparently it is also very easy/inexpensive to set up, however, I believe QuickBase uses a proprietary language that is probably incompatible with Alpha Five. But then again, what do I know about web based programming?

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

        I worked a bit with quickbase, but I couldn't get around the security issue of one user being able to see the data of other users, and that made me nervous.
        Pat Bremkamp
        MindKicks Consulting

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          #5
          RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

          Pat:

          When you worked with QuickBase, were you able to exchange data with Alpha Five files?

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

            Robert,
            PHP is a web progamming language that allows you to connect to several different
            database type and work with a tables data. Php and Html are used together to display data on the web. PhP will also work with XML to read the xml format and return data that may be formated to update a database table .

            There are other languages like Java that will do a better job but the learning curve is much steeper.

            Hope this helps
            Nick

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

              Nick:

              Will php or java work with a non-sql database like A5?

              -Bill

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

                Hi William,

                Yes, but the dbf format is probably PHP's weakest supported db format.

                Jim

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                  #9
                  RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

                  Sql syntax works with A5.
                  Php works best with Mysql but for many others ODBC is provided.

                  Nick

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

                    So the db driver that you would call from your PHP or Java (actually I am trying to work with Java), would be an odbc data source that you have previously set up in your Windows control pannel? And this would be an odbc source pointing to the A5 tables that you want to manipulate, using the Fox Pro 2.6 driver? As you can tell, I am new to this. Thanks for any help.

                    -Bill

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

                      Question.

                      Why use foxpro 2.6

                      I normally use dbase 5 when going through odbc


                      Just curious

                      Dave
                      Dave Mason
                      [email protected]
                      Skype is dave.mason46

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

                        I saw the Fox Pro 2.6 driver recommended on this board at some point and was able to create a working odbc source which I used with Cold Fusion to read A5 tables. (I have tried going the other way - i.e. creating an odbc source using an Oracle driver to allow A5 to read Oracle tables - with no success.) The Fox Pro 2.6 driver (not the Visual Fox Pro driver) does seem to allow other programs access to A5.

                        As I am new to Java though, I am wondering if you would use an odbc source (or just use an appropriate db driver) to look at A5 tables. I guess I have some more searching/reading to do.

                        -Bill

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: Web Based Front End for Alpha Five?

                          A5's file format is reported to be specifically Foxpro 2.6, not dBase.
                          Thank you,
                          Mike Konoff

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