R. S. Patil wrote:

>Dear Friends,
>
>I am developing LAN based Database applications using
>Firebird and Delphi since quite long.
>
>One of our Client wants to web enable a already running LAN
>based Application (FireBird->Delphi C/S Linux at Server
>and w9x Clients). What they want is some of the transactions
>to be entered through Browser or Update file to be uploaded
>through FTP and Update Database on Server.
>

By an update file, do you mean that they would like to be able to enter
data remotely (not necessarily through a web browser), and then upload it?
Is the idea simply to be able to perform certain tasks of your database
application remotely (from a remote office perhaps, or something like
that), or is it necessary to actually give public access to the web?
Because, if public access is not required, I would strongly recommend a
replication solution instead. That way, your customer could have a local
copy of the database, which they could work on, and then synchronize
periodically. The obvious advantage to this, is that you won't have to
modify your existing application at all (except perhaps for PK
validation problems, and such like, and that's not too hard), and it
wouldn't require that you acquire new skills for web development.

I was in a situation where my customer had 1 main office (where the
Linux database server was, and most of the client machines), and 2
smaller branch offices, connected together with a broadband (1Mb/256Kb)
connection. At first we were going directly over the wire... very slow!!
Then I wrote them a separate application for replicating their
databases, so now they work on a local copy of the database, which is
therefore very fast, and synchronize every minute, which, in practice,
gives almost no noticable delay.

So anyway, perhaps this sort of thing could help you in your situation...

Jonathan Neve.