MERANT Micro Focus Net Express™

Internet Applications

MERANT™

Issue 4
May 2000

Copyright © 2000 MERANT International Limited. All rights reserved.
This document and the proprietary marks and namesused herein are protected by international law.

MERANT has made every effort to ensure that this manual is correct and accurate but reserves the right to make changes without notice at its sole discretion at any time.

The software described in this document is supplied under a license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license, and in particular any warranty of fitness of MERANT software products for any particular purpose is expressly excluded and in no event will MERANT be liable for any consequential losses.

Micro Focus® is a registered trademark and Correlate™, Dialog System™, Form Designer™, Form Express™, MERANT™, Micro Focus COBOL™, Net Express™ and Solo™ are trademarks of MERANT International Limited.

Java™ and JavaBeans™ are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Microsoft®, Windows®, and Windows for Workgroups®, are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Netscape Communications™, Netscape™, Netscape Navigator™ and the Netscape Communications logo are trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation.

Visual Basic™, Transaction Server™ and Windows NT™ are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation

IBM® is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.

UNIX® is a registered trademark of X/Open Company Limited.

Preface

This book describes how you can create and debug Internet Applications using the Net Express tools Form Designer, Form Express and Solo.

Audience

This book is aimed at COBOL programmers who want to write applications to run on the Internet or their organization's intranet. You don't need to be an expert on the Intranet or intranet to use this book, although you will find it is easier to understand the concepts in here if you have spent some time using Web browsers to navigate either the World Wide Web or your organization's own intranet.

How to Use this Manual

To understand the basic concepts we use throughout the rest of the book, read chapter 1, and for a quick introduction to the Net Express tools for Internet programming, read chapter 2 . Chapter 3 explains the different types of control you can put on a page (HTML, Java applet and ActiveX), and between the different output formats Form Designer uses.

To learn how to create applications read chapters 4, 5 and 6. Chapter 4 shows you how to use Form Designer to create a new application, and chapter 5 shows you how to use the Data Access Wizard. Chapter 6 shows you how to use Form Express to create a legacy-based application. Since you can use Form Designer to modify the applications created with Form Express or the Data Access Wizard, you should read chapter 5 even if you are planning to use one of these other tools.

To find out about server-side programming read chapter 7. Form Designer, Data Access Wizard and Form Express generate skeleton applications to which you add further functionality through server-side programming.

To turn a standard CGI program into an ISAPI or NSAPI application by recompiling it, read chapter 8. Skip this chapter if you aren't interested in ISAPI or NSAPI.

If you want to use Form Designer in conjunction with other HTML editors read chapter 9.

If you want to add event handling to a form, read chapter 10. This is optional - most applications currently running on the Internet do not use event handling in the form. These techniques enable you to add extra sophistication to your applications. You can also add client-side validation to your form using the functions described in chapter 11.

When you finally want to deploy your application on a Web server, read chapter 12.

Notation

The following type styles and conventions have been used in this User's Guide:

Text that you type is shown like this:
cat script_name | more

The italic text denotes a variable that you type as part of the command.
Text in command lines or code examples that is optional is shown in square brackets. In the following example, the expression can specify that the column_name is like the pattern_value, or is not like the pattern_value, depending on the absence or presence of the optional word NOT:
column_name [NOT] LIKE pattern_value
Sections or paragraphs that apply only to a particular model or operating system are identified by a bold italic heading immediately preceding the paragraph it applies to. For example:
UNIX
This paragraph only applies on UNIX systems.