Micro Focus^® Server Express^™

Internet Applications

Micro Focus®

Issue 1b
September 2001

Copyright © 2002 Micro Focus International Limited.
All rights reserved.

Micro Focus International Limited has made every effort to ensure that this book 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 Micro Focus software products for any particular purpose is expressly excluded and in no event will Micro Focus be liable for any consequential loss.

Animator®, COBOL Workbench®, EnterpriseLink®, Mainframe Express®, Micro Focus®, Net Express®, REQL® and Revolve® are registered trademarks, and AAI™, Analyzer™, Application to Application Interface™, AddPack™, AppTrack™, AssetMiner™, CCI™, DataConnect™, Dialog System™, EuroSmart™, FixPack™, LEVEL II COBOL™, License Management Facility™, License Server™, Mainframe Access™, Mainframe Manager™, Micro Focus COBOL™, Object COBOL™, OpenESQL™, Personal COBOL™, Professional COBOL™, Server Express™, SmartFind™, SmartFind Plus™, SmartFix™, SourceConnect™, Toolbox™, VS COBOL™, WebSync™, and Xilerator™ are trademarks of Micro Focus International Limited. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

No part of this publication, with the exception of the software product user documentation contained on a CD-ROM, may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, or reduced to any electronic medium or machine-readable form without prior written consent of Micro Focus International Limited.

Licensees may duplicate the software product user documentation contained on a CD-ROM, but only to the extent necessary to support the users authorized access to the software under the license agreement. Any reproduction of the documentation, regardless of whether the documentation is reproduced in whole or in part, must be accompanied by this copyright statement in its entirety, without modification.

U.S. GOVERNMENT RESTRICTED RIGHTS. It is acknowledged that the Software and the Documentation were developed at private expense, that no part is in the public domain, and that the Software and Documentation are Commercial Computer Software provided with RESTRICTED RIGHTS under Federal Acquisition Regulations and agency supplements to them. Use, duplication or disclosure by the U.S. Government is subject to restrictions as set forth in subparagraph (c)(1)(ii) of The Rights in Technical Data and Computer Software clause at DFAR 252.227-7013 et. seq. or subparagraphs (c)(1) and (2) of the Commercial Computer Software Restricted Rights at FAR 52.227-19, as applicable. Contractor is Micro Focus International Limited, 9420 Key West Avenue, Rockville, Maryland 20850. Rights are reserved under copyright laws of the United States with respect to unpublished portions of the Software.

Preface

This book describes how you can create and debug Internet Applications using Server Express.

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 Book

To understand the basic concepts used throughout the rest of the book, read chapter 1.

To learn how to create applications read chapters 2, 3 and 4. Chapter 2 describes forms, Chapter 3 describes server-side programming, and chapter 4 describes how to compile and link an Internet application.

To turn a standard CGI program into a NSAPI application by recompiling it, read chapter 5. Skip this chapter if you aren't interested in NSAPI.

When you finally want to deploy your application on a Web server, read chapter 6.

Notation

The following type styles and conventions have been used in this book:

• 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:

  AIX
  This paragraph only applies on AIX systems.