ustom Online Databases
Adding 'FUNctionality' to the website. You can custom design simple
databases for your web site. These mini-applications look and work like the
big internet search engines, except they only look at and display the data in
your custom database. They are fast and easy to use .. and very functional.
 Sample
Application 1: My Online Business Directory. I wanted to be able look up
phone numbers for local area merchants online, and don't like wading
through the yellow or white pages to find them. It would be also be nice
to be able to search for all businesses within a given category (e.g.
computers) or other keyword .. so I built the BizDir web pages,
containing Magrath, AB businesses listings. You can try it out yourself by
browsing to: www.sdirect.com/bizdir |
 Sample
Application 2: www.ghtRx.com. A recent
web project requested the ability to organize and present online product
testimonials as part of the site functionality. Visitors can view existing
data entries by typing in keywords and are requested to add their own
experiences with the product. Results are presented 10 at a time and links
to subsequent pages are generated for each page. The results are viewable
at www.ghtrx.com/testimonals.htm |
How it works: These databases are simply flat text files with one
record per line. Within each record, '|' pipe characters are used to separate
the fields. e.g. field1|field2|field3|etc. Two programs are provided, one to
display the data and another to manage the database. The data file is read by
the program and data extracted for display.
Do it yourself: Although many ISP permit user CGI programs, some do
not. If yours does, you can experiment with these programs. Caution: Some
user modification to the program files is required to get the system to work
properly. You will need to know and specify the paths and locations of your
datafiles for your website and modify the corresponding HTML snippets in the
display_top, display_add, display_form, and display_bot .dat files. Be aware
that Perl programs can be finicky to debug .. if you introduce an error
somewhere in the .cgi file, the page just results in a generic error message
when you try to access it. Remember also to upload the .cgi files as ASCII
and set the CHMOD file permissions correctly .. .cgi needs 755 access and the
data files need 766 access. Of course, we can be contracted to assist in
these mundane details.
Acknowledgements: The CGI/Perl programs we use currently are based
on older programs originally created by Mike Carville www.web-bazaar.com/cgi/
under the name of Database_Doctor 2.0 email: carville@web-bazaar.com.
We have since enhanced, rewritten and debugged the code to our own
specifications. However, because portions of the code were originally
distributed a free source, we provide our updated source code for your
consideration as well. see our Jun 2001 sample files.
Database Doctor 3.0 Pro is currently also available for purchase.
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