Introduction
The basic idea was to build an JAVA Applet, which can be accessed from any web-browser. The applet resides on a web-server, and communicates with a Microsoft Access Database. The Applet can communicate with the database using a JDBC-ODBC driver.
Currently available commercial JDBC-ODBC Drivers cost around $4500- $6000 for upto 50 simultaneous user connectivity. On the other hand, a single user JDBC-ODBC driver comes integrated with JDBC 1.0 that is able to communicate with databases residing on the same computer from a JAVA application.
Keeping in mind the the initial cost involved, I have built a JAVA application that uses JDBC to connect to a Microsoft Access Database on the same computer. The application can be very easily configured to connect using a commercial JDBC-ODBC driver to a database on a web server (by changing the driver name used by the application). Also, with a little more effort, the JAVA application can be converted to an applet by changing some frame settings of the application.
Instructions for changing the Initial Settings (JDBC-ODBC driver + default settings) :
The Globals.java file can be changed using any word processor. The file initially contains :
class Globals
{
public static final String driverName =
"sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver";
public static final String connectTo =
"jdbc:odbc:newsgroup";
public static final String connectUserName = "";
public static final String connectPassword = "";
public static final String nameOfFrame = "Newsgroup";
public static final String currentPath =
"Z:/Vedant/Project/Project";
public static final String defaultURL =
"http://www.cornell.edu";
public static final String defaultBrowser =
"Z:/Vedant/Project/Project/PROGRAM/Netscape ";
}
Following is the information on each of the configurable settings:
DRIVER SETTINGS
OTHER DEFAULT SETTINGS
After changing the variables, all the JAVA files need to be re-compiled ( Command : "javac *.java" ). Once this is done, the new changes take effect.