Data Access Pages: What they are and how to create one

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Dynamic content is at the heart of successful presentation of enterprise information on the Internet. Without the ability to present data with user interaction, Internet based commerce will be meaningless. It is possible to create dynamic web pages with data from the enterprise by using several technologies, including MS Access.Introduction

Using MS Access, it is possible to create dynamic web pages using a couple of techniques. The technology of Active Server Pages; Data Access Pages [DAP] which had their debut in Access 2000; and a combination of IIS, ODBC and the Internet Database Connector can all be used for creating dynamic web pages using MS Access. However, each of these methods have their own ambit in which they are created. ASP, being a server side technology, leverages ADO, while Data Access Pages, a client side technology, depends on DynamicHTML. It is DHTML data binding with ADO that makes Data Access Pages possible. IDC is of historical value only, being version 1.0 of dynamic web page generation technique. Whether or not  DAP also becomes of historical value compared to the flagship ASP (ASP.NET) remains to be seen.

Microsoft Access stores all information about the data in its MDB file. However, DAP information is stored in an HTM file with a .htm extension. Since DHTML is behind this technology, it goes without saying that Microsoft's DOM (Document Object Model), the XML, the CSS and related technologies are brought into its creation.

The objective for this tutorial is quite simple. It shows how to create a Data Access Page from scratch and review some of its behavior when displayed on a browser. Data Access Pages being of Microsoft breed may not fare well on other browsers, such as Netscape, FireFox, and Opera. We will check it out during this tutorial. We will be looking at DAP creation from a query, and also converting forms and reports to DAP.

Next: Creating objects to be converted to DAP >>
 

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Comments On: Data Access Pages: What they are and how to create one

· If you want to display data quick and easy to the intranet with Microsoft products...    · I read much about the DAP pages, I can create them, design them, but I cannot find a...    · Is this from your site on a service provider? Do they have support for MS Access...    · Sorry Brett:I think you already gave me the information I needed. Try this,...    · Brett,I'm trying to find out how to include the following capability on a...    · Bob, I'm needing to do the exact same thing with a free form search field to return...    · I have not tried this, but when I have some spare time I will. Try to implement a...    · I think parametric queries are the ones you are looking for. If this is not the...   >>> Post your comment now!