ODBiC Version 2.0 Released

Market Wire, 20050229

If you can create HTML Web pages, you can also create interactive, database-enabled Web applications just by learning a few simple ODBiC "script" commands.

Without the complexity of CGI or ASP programming, ODBiC provides a simple, easy-to-use SQL interface to ODBC database on Windows NT/95/98/2000 platforms, as well as many other functions and features for creating dynamic, interactive Web sites. ODBiC script commands are embedded directly in HTML "template" files, which allows you to use your favorite HTML editor and to focus on presentation rather than programming.

New features in Release 2.0 include browser file uploading, and per-user and per-session "persistent" data. The user and session data features give you an easy method to overcome the "single request and response" HTTP protocol: You can associate data temporarily or permanently to your site visitors, with optional logins and session "time-out", without worrying about "cookies" and passing data around in your forms and scripts.

ODBiC is a shareware program that runs under any standard Windows Web server. Registration fees are $39 for a single-copy license or $79 for a multiple-copy "corporate" license. More information and a 30-day full-featured evaluation copy are available at: www.odbic.com

Functional Description:

ODBiC is available in a CGI version for all servers, or for more efficiency, it is also available in ISAPI (for Microsoft servers) or NSAPI (Netscape) "server extension" versions, which are "load-once DLLs".

With ODBiC commands, you can do ANSI-standard SQL SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE operations to any ODBC database (which includes virtually all commercial databases for the Windows environment), without the complicated programming details normally associated with the ODBC interface. For example, when you SELECT the data you need, those database columns are immediately available as "variables" that you can use anywhere in your template. Or you can directly INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE data using variables sent to the script from an HTML form.

To make life even easier, ODBiC also provides simple, one-line commands for common application requirements such as: automatic "query by example" and "boolean keyword search" for a user's data selection criteria; automatic HTML forms for database insertions and updates; automatic HTML table generation from query results; automatic "pull-down" HTML selection lists built from a database query; "default" values for data omitted in an input form or in a database column; "translation tables" to display coded values as readable text; and "format masks" (for example, to add a $ sign, commas, and two decimal places) whenever a variable is displayed.

To fully control your script processing, ODBiC provides powerful "if then/else" and "do while" conditional processing. Multiple rows returned by a query can be processed within a loop, including an easy method to do "category" or "master/detail" result groupings. The "arithmetic, logic, and string expressions" used to test and set variables can use a rich set of numeric and text-string manipulation functions, similar to the BASIC programming language.

ODBiC also includes other useful features you need for an interactive Web site: send e-mail (with attachments) directly from a script, including selecting the TO addresses from the database; use "cookies" to track user activity and data from one visit to the next; redirect the user's browser to a different page; validate a user's input with standard data-type tests or "regular expression" pattern matching; easily process multiply-defined input variables (such as "multiple select" choice lists); "import" data from a text file; write HTML or data text files; process a file directory listing; rename and delete files; and execute system commands and external programs.

The simplicity of the ODBiC scripting language makes it easy for non-programmers to build impressive interactive Web applications, yet the power is there to build complex applications. Even experienced Web developers often prefer ODBiC to ASP, PHP, ColdFusion, and other script processors because its simplicity leads to very rapid development.