Re: please help me enter the modern age

Richard >> If each Web hit is a separate"session", then I would still have to fork a new process for >>each Web hit. I don't know anything about PHP so I may have the wrong idea here. A session as I meant it was a set of transactions by the same user. For example, I may have a stock application, where the user checks to see his accounts, then buys and sells some stock. These would correspond to at least 3 web hits, once for getting his account, once for recording the buy and once for recording the sell. However, with PHP, you get a connection once, and use the same connection id to do the rest of the transactions, so in effect, you open the database connection once. You could close the connection explicitly using the appropriate function (perhaps corresponding to a logout button), or it is automatically garbage collected by PHP when not in use. For details you may want to refer to the PHP manual. In any case, since you have so many 4GL modules that you use already, you may want to just use the CGI modules for 4GL. Thanks to Jonathan Stowe for the following info: --- There are at least two CGI modules for 4GL available from the IIUG archive: <ftp://ftp.iiug.org/pub/informix/pub/cgi_4gl.Z> <ftp://ftp.iiug.org/pub/informix/pub/i4glcgi/i4glcgi-1.00.tar.gz> I have used the former of those and it works fine - the advantage being that if you have a large body of 4GL code it reduces the work involved in converting it to use the CGI in comparison to rewriting it all in (say) Perl ... --- HTH Sujit Richard Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@mediaone.net> on 01/07/2000 04:43:50 PM Please respond to Richard Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@mediaone.net> To: informix-list@iiug.org cc: Subject: Re: please help me enter the modern age <Sujit.Pal@bankofamerica.com> wrote: > You could use PHP (compile with with-informix) or Java servlets (with Informix > JDBC). Both allow you to open a server connection for a session and keep it open > for the duration of the session. PHP being a scripting language is obviously > easier to implement. I'll try to look into PHP, thanks ... but I'm not sure if opening a server connection for a session is what I want. If each Web hit is a separate "session", then I would still have to fork a new process for each Web hit. I don't know anything about PHP so I may have the wrong idea here. Paul Storm <paulst@rainmakersystems.com> wrote: > My first take would be to go with PERL. You can grandfather the > 4GL and CGI stuff, get procedures, open language support, and > a migration path. Also PERL is freely available for download. Thanks again, but wouldn't this have the same problem? The Web server would receive user-entered form data from someone's Web client, fork a Unix process to run the Perl program, and the Perl program would presumably have embedded SQL in it that it would send to the database server. Doesn't this put you into the same area of having each Web hit fork a Unix process and start a new connection to the database server? It seems like this would replace the 4gl as CGI with Perl as CGI. That would probably be better, but I'm trying to get rid of the CGI altogether by having the Web server be the only database client. Or does Apache do something where you can run Perl programs inside it without spawning separate processes?

Sujit.Pal@bankofamerica.com wrote: > Richard > > >> If each Web hit is a separate"session", then I would still have to fork a new > process for > >>each Web hit. I don't know anything about PHP so I may have the wrong idea > here. > A session as I meant it was a set of transactions by the same user. For example, > I may have a stock application, where the user checks to see his accounts, then > buys and sells some stock. These would correspond to at least 3 web hits, once > for getting his account, once for recording the buy and once for recording the > sell. However, with PHP, you get a connection once, and use the same connection > id to do the rest of the transactions, so in effect, you open the database > connection once. You could close the connection explicitly using the appropriate > function (perhaps corresponding to a logout button), or it is automatically > garbage collected by PHP when not in use. For details you may want to refer to > the PHP manual. > > In any case, since you have so many 4GL modules that you use already, you may > want to just use the CGI modules for 4GL. Thanks to Jonathan Stowe for the > following info: > --- > There are at least two CGI modules for 4GL available from the IIUG archive: > > <ftp://ftp.iiug.org/pub/informix/pub/cgi_4gl.Z> > > <ftp://ftp.iiug.org/pub/informix/pub/i4glcgi/i4glcgi-1.00.tar.gz> > > I have used the former of those and it works fine - the advantage being that if > you have a > large body of 4GL code it reduces the work involved in converting it to use the > CGI in > comparison to rewriting it all in (say) Perl ... > --- > > HTH > Sujit > > Richard Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@mediaone.net> on 01/07/2000 04:43:50 PM > > Please respond to Richard Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@mediaone.net> > > To: informix-list@iiug.org > cc: > Subject: Re: please help me enter the modern age > > <Sujit.Pal@bankofamerica.com> wrote: > > You could use PHP (compile with with-informix) or Java servlets (with > Informix > > JDBC). Both allow you to open a server connection for a session and keep > it open > > for the duration of the session. PHP being a scripting language is > obviously > > easier to implement. > > I'll try to look into PHP, thanks ... but I'm not sure if opening a server > connection for a session is what I want. If each Web hit is a separate > "session", then I would still have to fork a new process for each Web hit. > I don't know anything about PHP so I may have the wrong idea here. > > Paul Storm <paulst@rainmakersystems.com> wrote: > > My first take would be to go with PERL. You can grandfather the > > 4GL and CGI stuff, get procedures, open language support, and > > a migration path. Also PERL is freely available for download. > > Thanks again, but wouldn't this have the same problem? The Web server would > receive user-entered form data from someone's Web client, fork a Unix > process to run the Perl program, and the Perl program would presumably have > embedded SQL in it that it would send to the database server. Doesn't this > put you into the same area of having each Web hit fork a Unix process and > start a new connection to the database server? It seems like this would > replace the 4gl as CGI with Perl as CGI. That would probably be better, but > I'm trying to get rid of the CGI altogether by having the Web server be the > only database client. Or does Apache do something where you can run Perl > programs inside it without spawning separate processes? I do not think you need any CGI script at all. You should be able to use your current 4GL programs and run them across the net securely on any browser, accessing the data on your Informix or Oracle database. You can see an online demo on: http://www.querix.com/ -- Compliments of QueriX -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QueriX 4GL Compilers are Informix 4GL Compatible, and Connection to other RDBMS such as Oracle. Hydra 4GL Compiler Compile once, run everywhere Phoenix Windows GUI. Chimera Java GUI The only GUI you will ever need... Arachne Web Technology For more details visit: http://www.querix.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

QueriX 4GL / Mehdi <mehdi@querix.com> wrote > I do not think you need any CGI script at all. You should be able to use your > current 4GL programs and run them across the net securely on any browser, > accessing the data on your Informix or Oracle database. Thanks Querix, but I'm not having users download 4gl programs. I want the general public to be able to access a database-backed Web site. I don't want them to have to download or run any Web-client-side programs.

Richard Puchalsky wrote: > QueriX 4GL / Mehdi <mehdi@querix.com> wrote > > I do not think you need any CGI script at all. You should be able to > use your > > current 4GL programs and run them across the net securely on any browser, > > accessing the data on your Informix or Oracle database. > > Thanks Querix, but I'm not having users download 4gl programs. I want the > general public to be able to access a database-backed Web site. I don't > want them to have to download or run any Web-client-side programs. The Arachne Web does not require the client to download any thing from the web, all it needs is a browser, that I presume would be needed by the "general public" you refer to. To test for yourself go to the following site: http://www.querix.com/ Click on Arachne (under Online Demos) Click on Arachne Web Technology Demo Sorry your email address @ "Richard Puchalsky" <rpuchalsky@mediaone.net> responds with bad address. -- Compliments of QueriX -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QueriX 4GL Compilers are Informix 4GL Compatible, and Connection to other RDBMS such as Oracle. Hydra 4GL Compiler (Compatible with I4GL) Compile once, run everywhere Phoenix Windows GUI. (Front End to 4GL) Chimera Java GUI The only GUI you will ever need... (Front End to 4GL) Arachne Web Technology (Front End to 4GL on the Web) For more details visit: http://www.querix.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------