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Accessing Alpha5 from Website

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    #16
    RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

    Richard said they now have in place a special discount for people who bought V5 after a certain date who upgrade the V6.
    Cole Custom Programming - Terrell, Texas
    972 524 8714
    [email protected]

    ____________________
    "A young man who is not liberal has no heart, but an old man who is not conservative has no mind." GB Shaw

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      #17
      RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

      Chris Erichson wrote:
      -------------------------------
      Does anyone know of a method to access data from Aplha5 from a ASP page?

      Others have mentioned A5v6 so I won't.

      Keep in mind that A5 data is DBF-style. So =any= method you might use to post DBF data on the web could be used with A5 data.

      For example, there's a Perl module that can read DBFs (and write, though I'd think you'd want to avoid or at least limit that). Perl is a freely available scripting language that's quite common on the web.

      There are really a wealth of ways to do this, but they're external to A5.

      It wouldn't even be difficult to control A5 through DDE conversations; you could literally query and post info through an external program using DDE and xBasic commands. The main issue there would be A5's stability and the fact that A5 is meant to be interacted with, so a pop-up error message might just kill you.

      Comment


        #18
        RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

        "Is licensing/limiting the number of users over the web standard practice? It seems like there's a billion web sites out there and none of them kick you off because the "user count has been exceeded". It seems counter-intuitive to limit a web site to a specific number of users. Or am I missing something?"

        They're not all apples. There are some oranges in there, too. A5v6 won't just be apples all of itself, come to think of it.

        You have the Alpha development environment, which is also the Alpha client (though these may represent different code bases). You have a standalone database engine (what we currently use, which is somewhat treacherous in high-volume multi-user environments). You have a sever. And you have a web server.

        Traditionally, development environments license per programmer. (MS may operate per seat, I'm not sure, but traditionally tools developers have said one programmer can use his license anywhere, as long as he's the only one using it.)

        Clients are often free. A non-free client is often an invitation to product death. Some have survived, though--I think Clarion was one of those pay-per-client deals. (It's not so bad for vertical apps, but it makes shareware impossible.)

        Standalone database engines are usually coupled with a client or a development environment or both. Since the engine's no good otherwise, they follow whichever license they're being used with. (A development environment may expect to be used by a single user, but that developer may distribute his app freely to any number of clients.)

        Servers, web or otherwise, when offered as standalone products, are almost always done on a per-seat basis, offset somewhat by high minimums or low maximums. In other words, some servers have a base of 10 users, and if you have a small business use, you might never need more. Other servers offer unlimited use very cheaply.

        Alpha is, in essence, all five things, including two servers (one for the database, one for the web). In many development cases, you could expect to pay SEPARATE licensing for BOTH. (I think IIS and SQL Server, e.g., to say nothing of having to have licenses for Visual Studio.) You can sometimes get a cheaper license for 'net connections than direct ones. There are also ways to cheat but I think those are prohibited by the licensing agreements.

        Unlimited licenses for DBMSes run in the $10,000 range but you can pay a LOT more. Internet servers tend to be cheaper per user, in my experience.

        Cheapest "single" solution I know of (that can be used for development of unlimited Client-Server/Internet apps) is Borland's Delphi Professional ($1,000), using the freeware Apache Server and the freeware OpenIB/Firebird. The next cheapest would be Delphi Enterprise ($3,000) which includes an unlimited Interbase license (and a whole bunch of other stuff). Of course, it can all be done for free, too, if you're willing to do the leg-work.

        As long as A5 keeps their licenses clear (which can be a =huge= PITA, when you don't even know what you've bought) and competitive (which I would expect), we'll be fine.

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          #19
          RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

          Peter Greulich wrote:
          -------------------------------
          Is licensing/limiting the number of users over the web standard practice? It seems like there's a billion web sites out there and none of them kick you off because the "user count has been exceeded". It seems counter-intuitive to limit a web site to a specific number of users. Or am I missing something?

          You might have missed "Connection refused" and "Server busy". Sometimes you see an out-and-out "Too many users."

          Keep in mind, though, that:

          -> The freeware Apache is huge. It (obviously) has no client limitations. (Though they recommend setting a maximum client number, since exceeding your server's capabilities can end up ruining your site for everyone, rather than just refusing one person.) Web server stats are at:

          http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html

          -> Most sites don't use databases, if you're talking quantity. (Blogs, hobby pages, etc.)

          -> The sites that do use databases may not be using typical or traditional DBMSes. Until relatively recently, they didn't hook up well.

          -> The web is stateless. Let's say there are 1,000 people browsing your web site. How many of them are requesting data at the same moment? A fraction, and probably a small one. Typical web solutions treat each request as an individual session. You might make 100 requests in an hour, but that's no different from 100 people making 1 request each.

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            #20
            RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

            Hi Lenny,

            What about the people that only need 5 or 10 cals we have to get 50 as a minimum? This would not be good and the cost would be out of reach based on what I was told about
            Pricing that I will not say hear.

            -Ray

            Comment


              #21
              RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

              Thank You Doug, of all these posts, this appears the most helpful. I'll begin testing ASP web access using the connection string for Visual FoxPro drivers. I'm also glad that my question sparked interest for the new features comming soon in Alpha5v6. I never even heard of this application until my client showed me his current system. I'm glad that it too is flexable enough to store and query data from outside sources.

              Thanks everyone!
              Chris Erichson

              Comment


                #22
                RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

                PERL is a language that is not interpreted by IIS's ASP Interpreter as far as I know. Perl tends to be mostly used on Unix\Linux platforms. I'll keep this in mind in case something bad happens and we decide to use PERL.

                Comment


                  #23
                  RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

                  BTW, The ODBC Drivers for Visual FoxPro are version 1.0 .. is the driver supposed to be 2.6 or is Visual FoxPro supposed to be 2.6?

                  Comment


                    #24
                    RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

                    ""PERL is a language that is not interpreted by IIS's ASP Interpreter as far as I know. Perl tends to be mostly used on Unix\Linux platforms. I'll keep this in mind in case something bad happens and we decide to use PERL.""

                    I believe you can download a free PERL interpreter for use with IIS/ASP at:

                    www.activestate.com

                    They also have Python.

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                      #25
                      RE: Accessing Alpha5 from Website

                      Thanks , I'll get that

                      Chris Erichson

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