Add1DB - Data base: Create Your Own Interactive Web Pages

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What is Add1DB?

Add1DB is easy-to-use powerful database software designed for the WEB. Add1DB has the equivalent purpose as DBASE or MS ACCESS but is unique in that a database can be created and used totally via the WEB, and it's so easy to do that anyone can create exciting interactive WEB pages with search forms, entry forms and reports all in a matter of minutes.

What can I do with Add1DB?

As you use Add1DB you will realize the number of possible applications and potential of these is endless. Add1DB has a high level of security options which allow you to control who can have access to add, and/or change and/or search any data base or field . The following are some suggestions of what you can do with Add1DB:

Add an application form, questionnaire, survey, or purchase order to your Web page. Data input will automatically be added to your database.
Add a Bulletin Board/News Group to your web site to allow visitors to discuss with each other or your sales team; your product, service, web page, topics of interest, make announcements or ask questions.
Add a catalogue or directory to your Web page that visitors can quickly search for products, services or information and/or add their own products, services or information.
Add a classified advertising section to your Web page where visitors can submit adds and/or search the database for what they want.
Add a calendar so visitors can see and record upcoming events.
Add secure 'email' allowing you and your users to send and receive secure messages.

You can download Add1DB and try it on your own system for FREE, but to help you understand how easy Add1DB is to use we have created several very simple applications and set these up on our system so you can try them out here. In each of these we have used Add1DB to define and create the input form used to collect data to add to the database, the search form on which users specify what detail they are searching for and the report format which is used to display the result of the search.

Examples:

Chat bulletin board
Singles Dating contact database
Classified Advertising database
Web Questionaire

Try example databases out right NOW

But can I really create and modify my own database via the WEB?

Yes you can . We recommend you download Add1DB NOW and try it on your system for FREE. But we have set up Add1DB on our system and invite you to try it out here if you like. You will want to use the following Quick Guide to creating a database and you may find the tutorial below helpful.

Quick Guide to creating a database

To Create a New Database and Define Data Fields: From Add1DB Database Manager select "add database" ,name and create the database.
Select 'Add Table', to create a new table. Select 'Table Modify" to add data fields. Specify the data type i.e. string, number, date.
If some of your fields refer to other tables create the other tables as well.
Click on 'Database Modify'.
To Create Entry Form and Search Form Automatically: Click on 'Generate Search/Entries'.
To Add Data to the Database: Select entry form 'run' to add data to your database.
To Search the Database: Select search form 'run' to test each search and report.
To Link the Entry and Search forms to Your Web Pages: Define links from your normal pages to point directly to Add1DB search or entry forms.

Tutorial

From Add1DB Database Manager select "add database" from the table of current data basis. Name and then create the new database. Example: Enter "Staff"
Select "Add Table". Name and then create a new table. Select "Table Modify" and specify the data fields to be recorded in the table. It is important to specify the data type, i.e. string, number, date etc. Save changes and return to "Modify database" .
Example
Field type
Name string
Salary number
Position string
If some of your fields refer to other tables, then create the other tables as well.
Click on 'Generate Search/Entries' this will automatically generate standard entry and search forms for you. Then return to 'Modify database' and reload/refresh this page. Add1DB will now be showing you a list of the table, entry form, search form and report that have been created together with options to 'modify', 'delete' or 'run' these.
To add some data to your database select 'run' entry form and enter data.
Example
Name salary position
Green 10000 Clerical
Smith 15000 Factory
Jones 20000 Manager
Test each search and report by selecting 'run' search form. The following example will search and select all staff with a salary above 12000.
Example Search
name
salary above 12000
position
To link your Web page to Add1DB search or entry forms you need to define links from your web pages to point directly to the Add1DB search or entry forms. This can be quickly done by running the selected entry or search form and then selecting the location address at the top of the page and using 'Copy' and 'Paste' to incert this in your Web page. You will need to edit this by adding: <a href=" before the address and ">text</a> after the address.

Example
Field	type
Name	string
Salary	number
Position	string

Example
Name	salary	position
Green	10000	Clerical
Smith	15000	Factory
Jones	20000	Manager

Example Search
name
salary	above 12000
position

Table Create/Modify

NOTE: A database table is NOT an HTML table, in database terminology a 'table' is like a data file containing information separated into fields (columns). It is unfortunate that their is only one word for both concepts at present.

This form lets you create your table, specifying a list of fields with their types, here is an example:

Name String
Age Number
Birth Date

It is important to tell Add1DB that 'age' is a number so that it can sort and search correctly.

For data which should be chosen from a list of options, e.g. color =red, green, blue, orange, you can refer to a secondary table which you can create, this secondary table should only have one field i.e. 'color'. You would then enter the colors into the secondary table as data using the normal entry form.

field data field data field data field data
color red color green color blue colour orange

Entry Form Create/Modify

This form lets you design an entry form. For each field that you want the user to enter you can define a prompt to go before the field box, as well as a default value, and also text to appear after the box. Any of this text can include HTML codes to add special effects.

Hidden fields are not shown to the user, these can be used to create special data entry forms where most of the information is already known. Note the 'fixed' setting which allows you to not only hide the input data, but make it impossible for an HTML hacker to replace the hidden values, this allows you to code things like record ownership into forms without breaching security.

You can specify several special symbols as the 'default' for any field.

$user$ will be translated to the current user code
$now$ will be translated to the current date and time
$p1$ will be translated to the first variable in a list of variables passed by a report (see the column entitled 'Pass fields' in the Report Modify form.

Search Form Create/Modify

This form lets you design a search form for the user to search your database with. Each field can have pre text, post text and a default value, you can use these setting to tailor the appearance of the search form.

Report Format Create/Modify

This form lets you create a report, you can specify any number of fields, and you can specify text (including HTML codes) to be written before and after each field. You can also create references to other reports or entry forms.

To define a reference, you must supply the text that should be clickable, and the 'end of reference' marker "</a>". By putting the 'end of reference' after the next field you can make a field clickable.

The 'modify' setting is only significant for references to 'entry' forms, without the 'modify' option selected, this will bring up an entry form for a NEW record, with the 'MODIFY button selected Add1DB will bring up the entry form for an existing record and let you MODIFY it or DELETE it.

To create a report that looks like a table, with one line for each record, you need to add the following HTML codes:

<table border> <tr> <th> Col1 <th> Col2 <th> Col3

<tr> <td> field 1 <td> field 2 <td> field 3

</table>

To do this you put the <table border.. codes into the PRE box at the top of the form

You put </tab/e> in the post box at the end of the form.

Then you put <tr><td> before the first field and <td> before each of the rest of the fields.

Search Run

This form lets you run a search, the output of a search is a 'report'.

For string fields, anything entered in the field will be searched for, if the field is left blank then any record will match. For example, if you enter the text 'mit' this will match a record containing the word "Smith"

To search for number you can enter:

above 100

between 10000 and 20000

below 20

For searching dates you can enter expressions like:

after 1993

between 1-JAN-1993 and 4-FEB-1993

before 1990

Generate

The generate function is a quick and easy method to create a report, search form and entry form for a table. You can use these generated forms as is, or tailor them to produce a more polished system. If you add fields to the table, you may want to delete a report or entry form and then use Generate again to re-create it with the extra fields.

Access Protection

Add1DB gives a high level of access protection, you can specify who can read, modify or add to a table, you can also specify who can modify a database definition. Each report can be protected so only specified users can use it to 'read' the database, in this way private information like salary in a personnel database can be hidden from general users. Infact as records can be individually owned you can even let users maintain data in their own records without any risk of them being able to see or change other users information.

To make it possible for Add1DB to detect which user is using the database you need to protect the image file (Add1DB.exe) And obviously you need to register all your users in your Web Server. But wait I hear you cry, what if I want the great unwashed to be able to search my database, but only I should be able to add records, to achieve this copy add1db.exe to add1db_prot.exe and then protect the second file, use this one for your access and then use the other one for general users.

To create 'record' level access, add a field called 'owner' to your table, and then set this to the user who owns this record, then in a report or entry form you can specify 'owner' as the person who can read or modify the record and if the current user code matches the 'owner' field then the given action will be allowed.

This is the end of this document

It is not recommended you read the following using any biological process!

Add1DB database software CGI for creating interactive WWW interactive web page applications runs on windows NT windows 95 UNIX VMS OS2 Novell Netware replacement for Oracle SQL ODBC ;Add1DB database software CGI for creating interactive WWW interactive web page applications runs on windows NT windows 95 UNIX VMS OS2 Novell Netware replacement for Oracle SQL ODBC ;Add1DB database software CGI for creating interactive WWW interactive web page applications runs on windows NT windows 95 UNIX ODBC

field	data		field	data		field	data		field	data
color	red		color	green		color	blue		colour	orange