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

• driverName : String value to the new Driver Type
• connectTo : String value to the database connection setup by the driver
• connectUserName : String value containing the username that is used to connect to the database
• connectPassword : String value containing the password that is used to connect to the database

OTHER DEFAULT SETTINGS

• nameOfFrame : String that appears on the newsgroup window.
• currentPath : String that contains the path of the JAVA classes of Course Newsgroup.
• defaultURL : String that contains the default URL. This URL is shown on the right window of the newsgroup.
• defaultBrowser : String that contains the default web Browser. This command is called when the web browser needs to be opened.

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.

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