Re: how to put an app on the web
From: Brion L. Webster (brion.webster_at_nospam.ci.fresno.ca.us)
Date: 03/18/05
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Date: 18 Mar 2005 08:26:22 -0800
Jon Purvis wrote:
Most of my apps are D7/ADO/Access (or D7/ADO/<big SQL database>),
and I've dabbled with getting some of them to the Internet.
There are two main ways of making "internet" applications - ones
that use the internet as a transport protocol, and ones that
program the browser.
My experience with users is the data entry ones loathe browser
apps, given any other choice, while the management ones love them.
Browsers tend to be keyboard unfriendly, especially with tab
orders. So depending on how your users drive your app, they may be
really put off by clicking and typing and clicking.
Making Active Forms out of things hasn't worked very well for me,
but that might be more about my programming skills than anything
else. One huge drawback is it will limit you to Internet Explorer
as your browser. Granted, you're already tied to Windows
(presumably because you're using Delphi), but do you really want to
lock yourself out of FireFox?
My most stable "internet" applications are rich Win32 clients that
use TCP/IP to get to a middle tier server, that then writes back to
a database. As someone else pointed out, ASTA is a perfect
enabler. You basically switch out all your TADOxxx for TAstaXXX,
write a little database resolver, and go. ASTA even automatically
updates clients when a new version is released, you check the new
release onto the server, when a client connects ASTA compares
version numbers, and silently updates the client. You don't say
what version of Delphi you're using, MIDAS/datasnap may be the
cheaper way to go if you've got Enterprise.
This gives you the benefit of a rich Win32 user interface, possibly
even exactly the same one you're using now. You've got full
keyboard support, tab order control, etc. It takes virtually no
bandwidth (except if you're updating clients - that can be painful
on dial-up). It also gives you a fairly easy way to change
databases - just release a different resolver. You can configure
the server side and the client side to talk wherever it needs to go.
As for browser-programming...I'd highly encourage you to look at
IntraWeb. It beats the pants off of WebSnap and WebBroker (the
other "Delphi native" web frameworks). You can either write an
isapi dll (requires IIS hosting) with D7 Pro, or a fully standalone
web server with D7 Ent+. http://myserver.tx.us:9999 would bypass
IIS (and all it's administrative nightmares) and go right to your
intraweb app. IntraWeb would then serve pages back to the browser.
The browser "interface" is so very different than a Win32 interface
that I really doubt the same UI design would work.
-Brion
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