Beginning ASP Databases

853 Pages·1999·49.904 MB·English

by  John Kauffman, Kevin Spencer, Thearon Willis (auth.)

Summary of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Why Use ASP and ADO to Put Your Database on the Web?
Chapter 2: Setting Up ASP and ADO
Chapter 3: Simple Recordsets-Reading Data
Chapter 4: Basic SOL for ADO Recordsets
Chapter 5: More Uses for Simple Recordsets
Chapter 6: Connections
Chapter 7: Behind the Scenes of ADO
Chapter 8: Recordset Parameters
Chapter 9: Recordset Methods and Properties
Chapter 10: SOL Statements to Modify Data
Chapter 11 : Databases and Cookies
Chapter 12: The Errors Collection
Chapter 13: Command Object
Chapter 14: Stored Procedures and Passing Parameters
Chapter 15: Irregular Data
Chapter 16: ADO Tips and Tricks
Chapter 17: Performance Testing and Performance Improvements
The Sailors Case Study
Appendix A: Structure of Sailors.mdb
Appendix B: Structure of Clothier.mdb
Appendix C: Profile.mdb Database Schema
Appendix D: Creating a Sailors Database in SOL Server
Appendix E: Active Server Pages Object Model
Appendix F: Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 2.0 Library Reference
Appendix G: VBScript Reference
Index
Beginning ASP Databases
John Kauffman
with
Kevin Spencer
Thearon Willis
APress Media, LLC
Beginning ASP Databases
Copyright© 1999 by John Kauffman, with Kevin Spencer, and Thearon Willis
Originally published by Apress in 1999
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
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ISBN 978-1-59059-249-6 ISBN 978-1-4302-1121-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4302-1121-1
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Credits
Editorial Board Managing Editors
Dan Appleman Joanna Mason
Craig Berry Frances Olesch
Gary Cornell
Tony Davis Additional Material
Steven Rycroft Chris Blexrud
Julian Skinner David Buser
Martin Streicher David Sussman
JimSumser Chris Ullman
Karen Watterson
Gavin Wray Development Editor
John Zukowski Sarah Bowers
Technical Reviewers Technical Editors
Burt Abreu Joanna Mason
Chris Blexrud Dianne Parker
David Buser Andrew Polshaw
Charles Caison Jnr
Robert Chang Design/Layout
Michael Corning Tom Bartlett
Steve Danielson Mark Burdett
Marco Gregorini Jonathan Jones
Scott Haley John McNulty
Rob Hebron William Fallon
Jon Jenkins David Boyce
Manohar Kamath
Pieter Reint Siegers Kort Index
Robert MacDonald Alessandro Ansa
Sam MacDonald
Dave Navarro Sr Figures
Geoff Pennington David Boyce
John Timney William Fallon
David Williams
Cover
KurtKrames
About the Authors
John Kauffman
John Kauffman was born in Philadelphia, the son of a chemist and a nurse. John's family of six shared
daily brain teasers and annual camping forays that covered most of the 50 United States. After jobs
weeding strawberry patches, bussing tables, running spotlights for rock and roll concerts, touring North
America with a drum and bugle corps, prematurely leaving three colleges, stuffing voles for a
mammologist, packing boxes of rat poison, tarring roofs, delivering drapes in New York City, laboring in
a candy factory, teaching canoeing, driving a forklift, studying tiger beetles in the Chihuahua desert,
managing a picture framing factory, coaching a youth yacht racing team and volunteering as a human
guinea pig for medical research, John (to the great relief of all around him) earned a pair of degrees in the
sciences from The Pennsylvania State University and appeared to settle down. He then conducted research
for Hershey Foods in the genetics of the cacao tree and the molecular biology of chocolate production.
Subsequently he moved to Rockefeller University where he identified, cloned and sequenced DNA
regions which control the day and night biochemical cycles of plants.
But science didn't hold a candle to a woman he met in 1985 and married. Since then he has followed Liz in
her career as a diplomat across four continents. They moved to Tanzania in 1986 and John began work
with computers and business management in an assistance program for subsistence-level farmers. In 1990
they moved to Taiwan and then mainland China where John provided software training services to multi
national corporations and the diplomatic community in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Sichuan.
During the graduation banquet for one course he was honored by his students with a special entree of
snake bile, frog skin and turtle meats.
John and Liz performed their most significant genetics experiments in 1988 and 1990 with the production
of their children Sylvia and John. Growing up in Africa and China, they are doing well hashing through
another generation's worth of brain teasers and camping trips.
John now divides his freelance consulting time evenly between teaching, writing and programming,
primarily in the areas of Visual Basic, Word macros, Access and Access Programming, and ASP. John is
available for contract training in Asia, Europe and North America by contacting
Training®Kauffmans.org.
This book is dedicated my parents in appreciation of their tremendous effort raising my siblings and me: to my father,
who spent so much of his time helping us to understand science and mathematics; and to my mother, who invested so
much of herself in facilitating our far-reaching interests in science, music and business. But their greatest gift was
helping us to understand how other people think, feel and learn, and to value what others have to say. That gift is the
key to my success. It is my parents' lessons that allow me to listen to my students and clients, then work with them
to achieve their goals.
Kevin Spencer
I started programming inC in the early '90's and wrote a number of shareware programs for DOS, most of
which were Door programs for BBSs. In the process, I learned to construct relational databases in C, and
later worked with Microsoft Visual FoxPro and Access. As Internet Database Connectivity technologies
began to emerge from Microsoft, I learned them as well, and several years ago, started my business, "Site
Design by TAKempis," which specializes in Internet Database application programming with ASP I ADO.
Microsoft awarded me the MVP award in 1997. I have written articles about Microsoft FrontPage and
ASP I ADO for several online magazines, including Wrox's ASP Today.
Thearon Willis
A senior consultant with 19 years of IT experience, Thearon is currently a consultant for an International
Insurance company providing Web programming services. His Web development tools of choice are ASP,
Dynamic HTML, Visual Basic and SQL Server. Thearon lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife
and daughter.
To my wife Margie for her patience and understanding while I write yet another book, I love you very much.

Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Why Use ASP and ADO to Put Your
Database on the Web? 11
Business Impact of Dynamic Web Pages 12
Active Server Pages Overview 12
Active Server Objects 13
Databases in the Modern World 13
ODBC 14
Databases on the Web Before ADO 15
The Way Ahead: Data Stores 17
What is OLE-DB? 17
The ADO Object Model 18
What ASP and ADO Can Do 20
ASP and ADO Examples 21
Why use Server-Side Solutions? 26
What Server-Side Solutions Mean in Business Terms 26
Benefits 26
Drawbacks 27
Alternative Web Servers with ASP 29
Alternatives to ASP 30
Take Home Points: A Summary Of Terminology 31
Summary 31
Table of Contents
Exercises 32
Quiz 32
Quiz Answers 33
Chapter 2: Setting Up ASP and ADO 35
Overview of Components and Options 36
Server Support for ASP 37
Installing liS on NT Server 37
Installing liS and ASP on Windows 2000
(Workstation or Server) 43
Do I need to install it at all? 44
Installing PWS on Win 9x 46
Sources of PWS 47
Typical Problems of PWS on Win9x 55
First, Be Sure You are Testing Correctly 55
Opening an ASP Page Launches Visual lnterdev,
FrontPage or PhotoShop 55
IE Connects to Internet Even When Page is Local on PWS 56
Loss of FTP Message 57
NotePad Adds a .txt Extension 57
IE Erroneously Changes the URL type 58
Installation Error Message: Requires 32 bit TCP /IP
Networking or Missing WinSock 58
PWS Install Can't see IE 4.01 59
Synchronizing Default Pages 59
MTS registry not installed 60
More Troubles and Troubleshooting 60
ASP Roadmap 61
Installing ADO on liS/NT /Win 2000 or Win9x/PWS 61
Setting up DSNs 64
Steps to Create a DSN for an Access Database 65
Steps to Create a DSN for a SQL Datastore 67
A Practical Tip on Thinking Ahead 73
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