DataPerfect/User Web Enabling

Web Enabling DataPerfect

Basic Concept There are two main mechanisms for web enabling DataPerfect. One uses Firestorm which is database engine which is compatible with the DataPerfect file formats. The second uses DataPerfect as the engine using a CGI program. Firestorm Firestorm is written in ANSI C programming language, and links together a number of object modules and the DataPerfect application definition file (.str). The resultant executable, through commandline switches, can manipulate or extract data from the DataPerfect database. Native DP Engine The native DataPerfect (DOS) executable file can be run from various CGI programming languages, including 'C', Perl, Python, and PHP. The web server needs to be able to run MS-DOS or an emulation of MS-DOS such as DOSEMU on Linux systems. One of the DataPerfect commandline switches '/EI-file' allows data to be imported from the file, and processed via a DataPerfect report. This import file needs to be in a format known as the DataPerfect Transaction Log file. Which is more normally used for logging changes to the data in the database for transaction auditing. DataPerfect reports can be used to manipulate data, such as adding, editing, deleting or for extracting data. The results of reports can be saved to a file. An additional commandline switch /SID-sessionid allows session information to be passed into DataPerfect which can be used for controlling such things as output filenames. Output from the DataPerfect report, can be read and processed by the calling CGI program and sent to the client browser. The output file from DataPerfect can be a text file, an HTML format file, or an XML format file. External Links http://www.sanbachs.net/firestorm/ Firestorm project page