Maybe I need more experience with Perl to formulate my question properly. I will explain what the goal of this program is and how it will be used. Perhaps that will help.
As I said in the first post, I have an executable that is called First Article Report. Here at work we have a common network drive. Lets call it the 'M' drive. I would like this program to reside on the M drive so that the users can just go into the folder and execute the program. Using the program, the user would fill out the information fields and then click the 'submit' button. The submit button would then send the data to the script. I would like the data to then be stored in a sub-folder that resides within the same folder as the program. Everything would be local to this one folder on the M drive. The plan was to then be able to search this folder's data to be able to pull out the information submitted. The reports would be filed by a report number and then that would be one of the fields that could be queried. So I guess the answer to your question would be that I do not need a web server for the program. But, would I need a web server for the script to run or can it stand alone.
I hope that this made it a little clearer. I will definately check into the sources that you listed in your reply. Thank you | [reply] |
To answer your title question - Yes perl can create a searchable db.
To more fully answer your question would require a whole lot more dialog about your requirements, your goals and your expectations. You can easily create something like this in perl with a single (or few scripts) but it may not scale well (mutliple people modifying the report, large number of reports can kill simplistic searches).
Do you need a web server? I don't know. From you original post about using Flash, I immediately thought web. But since I have a healthy disdain for flash, I have no idea wether or not it can create standalone apps or not. The part about "sending" data to the scripts implied CGI (and hence web), but once again, maybe Flash has hooks that allow you to create standalone apps that
are CGI-like. Or maybe not - I don't know. You could do the while thing as a GUI (Tk,WK,Win32,etc) app if all the client machines accessing the data have perl (and the necessary modules) installed.
A simple thing like this can quickly bloom into a full scale Document Management System. Most of the monks here make their living doing such work and while most (if not all) would be glad to help you tweak or understand such a system, few have the time to help you build one from scratch.
My advice would be to start small using a webserver. Create the forms and scripts to just save data to a centralized data store. Work on adding, deleting and updating this data and then move on to searching. You're first going to run into configuration issues such as where can I save data on the webserver? (Hint it may not be that m drive you talk about or maybe the webserver sees the m drive as something else). You may want to peruse the book stores and check out CGI Programming - especially the chapters
on Data Persistence and Maintaining State.
Sorry if I sound a bit preachy but that's a tall order you're asking for (even though it sounds quite simple).
-derby
| [reply] |
I really appreciate the great advice. I would never ask anyone to help me to build such a system. I was only curious as to whether or not it could be done. Since I see now that it is possible I will set to work on it. When I get somewhere with it I may come back for more advice.
I built the application in Flash mainly because it does give the ability to create a stand alone application. What I am hoping for is to discover a way for the text file to be stored right there in a subfolder that I can just reference when a search is done. There is a minimum amount of people that would actually use the form. The others would only need to sign off the report once it is completed. The application is not web based but would reside on a common drive. I would have Perl installed on the M drive so that I would then have a local path to it. The end result would be a completely isolated application that would work no matter what pc the m drive was accessed from. Should be fun, eh?
Thanks again for the great pointers!
| [reply] |
If your form is going to 'submit' to a Perl script then yes, you will need a web server. If you already have a machine acting as a file server for your 'M' drive then you might be able to run the web server on that machine.
| [reply] |