At 05:31 AM 13-03-02 +0530, you wrote:

>Dear Friends,
>
>I want to convert a existing d5->IBO->FB two tier application to a
>Three Tier web application. So I searched on Web. I found ASTA site
>where they claim that we can use IBO server for that. The application
>uses Native IB queries and IB components extensively.
>
>Will ASTA be useful in keeping present QBE support and existing
>Forms etc. etc. as it is ? If somebody has tried it? if yes can let me know
>further details how to do it. I have not done any web applications before
>and know very little about WEB APPLICATIONS.

I'm sure Steve Garland will be able to reassure you of IBO native support
in the Asta server layer(s).

The answers to your other questions depend on what type of web application
you plan to do. Briefly, if the client is to be a web browser, the GUI of
your present client/server application will disappear. The server layer
will be effectively non-visual, an application devoted to handling security
access, querying the database in response to http requests and responding
by passing HTML or XML or, more likely, a mixture of both, back to the
surfer in http response structures. You don't use Delphi visual controls
at all if the client is a web browser; instead, you have a very restricted
set of standard HTML containers in which to display data and accept input.

If the client is to be some sort of Telnet client which the user runs from
a remote workstation, the GUI would use (probably a mixture of) Delphi
non-data-aware controls and specialised remote dataset
controls. Functionally, the purpose of this "thin client" would be the
same as the web browser interface - to accept user inputs and display
requested data sets. The data "back-end" to this type of client is the
server layer, which performs queries on behalf of the requestor, handles
data validation and delivers pre-formatted data structures to the client
program.

Either way, the server layer takes over most of the work that your
client/server client currently does. Except for a minimal console GUI for
administering the application, this server application doesn't involve
interactive users at all.

A good place to go for "absolute basics" is Shiv Kumar's site at
http://www.matlus.com


regards,
Helen Borrie (TeamIBO Support)

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