Deborah
2003-07-29 23:54:47 UTC
The most important part of our program involves the pricing of an order, and
there are many things that come into the equation when carrying out the
calculation. Approximately 11 tables (all part of a DBC) are involved in
the calculation and need to be accessed during the process. None of these
tables are static (ie. each is frequently changed by the user). The problem
is that many of our clients are now asking for a facility where their own
customers can place orders via the internet. Although several of them have
incorporated a simplistic "booking form" into their web sites (allowing
their customers to enter the basic information of the order) this isn't
really acceptable as their customers aren't able to instantly see the cost
of the order.
We have a temporary solution where our client's customer can use remote
access to run a scaled down version of our program (they go straight into
our clients system and run our smaller EXE, thereby accessing the DBC and
tables in the same way as our clients). This is certainly not an ideal
solution and we want to provide some way for our clients to offer true
"online" order entry to their own customers without restricting their choice
of web designers/hosts etc. I know nothing about COM but it has been
suggested that we might be able to use that technology to come up with a
better solution than what we currently have.
Can anyone recommend a book/article about COM that might help me get
started? Also, how exactly would COM help us? Would our clients DBC and
tables remain on their system and the COM server be installed on the web
host's server and access the tables at our client's site as and when it
needed them? Or would the COM server be installed on our client's system
together with the DBC and tables and the web server would call on the COM as
and when it needed it?
I know my terminology is probably all wrong, and I apologise for that in
advance, but this really is all very new to me! I feel like I'm drowning to
be honest!! So, if anyone out there can throw me a lifeline I'd be very
grateful...
Deborah :o)
there are many things that come into the equation when carrying out the
calculation. Approximately 11 tables (all part of a DBC) are involved in
the calculation and need to be accessed during the process. None of these
tables are static (ie. each is frequently changed by the user). The problem
is that many of our clients are now asking for a facility where their own
customers can place orders via the internet. Although several of them have
incorporated a simplistic "booking form" into their web sites (allowing
their customers to enter the basic information of the order) this isn't
really acceptable as their customers aren't able to instantly see the cost
of the order.
We have a temporary solution where our client's customer can use remote
access to run a scaled down version of our program (they go straight into
our clients system and run our smaller EXE, thereby accessing the DBC and
tables in the same way as our clients). This is certainly not an ideal
solution and we want to provide some way for our clients to offer true
"online" order entry to their own customers without restricting their choice
of web designers/hosts etc. I know nothing about COM but it has been
suggested that we might be able to use that technology to come up with a
better solution than what we currently have.
Can anyone recommend a book/article about COM that might help me get
started? Also, how exactly would COM help us? Would our clients DBC and
tables remain on their system and the COM server be installed on the web
host's server and access the tables at our client's site as and when it
needed them? Or would the COM server be installed on our client's system
together with the DBC and tables and the web server would call on the COM as
and when it needed it?
I know my terminology is probably all wrong, and I apologise for that in
advance, but this really is all very new to me! I feel like I'm drowning to
be honest!! So, if anyone out there can throw me a lifeline I'd be very
grateful...
Deborah :o)