Inteligencia De Negocios

WEBFOCUS NEWSLETTER
November/December 2000

Information Builders, Inc.

Vo l u m e 1 N u m b e r 4

WebFOCUS Application Development
— Deploying Local Applications to the Web

THIS ISSUE

Passing HTML Variables
to a WebFOCUS Application
by Diane Sklar

WebFOCUS Application Development —
Deploying Local Applications to the Web

1

by Richard Kwiatkowski

Passing HTMLVariables
to a WebFOCUS Application

1

T

Dynamic Data Sifting:
WebFOCUS Table of Contents Reports

6

Unicode Support in
WebFOCUS 4.3.1 and 4.3.5

9

WebFOCUS 4.3x and

10

Distributing Graphics with ReportCaster

10

From the FOCWizards

13

From the Maintain Wizards

15

From Where I Sit

17

Announcements

18

he WebFOCUS Developer Studio is the maindevelopment environment for Information
Builders’ total WebFOCUS solution. In release
4.3.1 of WebFOCUS Developer Studio, users
have the ability to create applications locally
and then deploy them to the Web server and
the EDA Server. An application contains the
procedures (.fex files), master files (.mas files),
and HTML pages (.htm files) that produce the
required output.
Using DeveloperStudio, the application developer can use a host of graphical tools (Report
Painter, Graph Assistant, Set Tool, etc.) to create
and test an application in the local environment. Once the files are created, the developer
can invoke Microsoft Front Page directly from
Developer Studio to create the HTML components of the application.
WebFOCUS Developer Studio provides the
Deploy Wizard to completethe application and
deliver it to the Web. The Deploy Wizard automatically gathers the application’s files (procedure files, master files, and HTML files) and uses
the WebFOCUS CGI to copy application code to
the Web server and the EDA Server.
Installation and Architecture
To deploy a local application to the Web successfully, developers need to understand the
various components that areused. This section
lists those components, with a brief description
of each:
WebFOCUS Developer Studio — This is the
application development environment for
WebFOCUS. From Developer Studio, a developer creates and tests the application locally
before deploying the application to the Web.
This component is installed on a local machine
that has a connection to the Web server.
Web Server — TheWeb server (Microsoft IIS,
for example) contains the files that users access
via a Web browser. In the deploy logic, the Web
(continued on page 2)

Information Builders, Inc.

V

ariables from an HTML form can be passed
into the FOCEXECs of a WebFOCUS application. The most frequent reason for doing this is
to pass authentication variables for access to
data or procedures. However, thesame technique that is used to do this can be used to pass
any application variable (for example, Social
Security number, employee number, or department) to an application. This article uses a simple example to demonstrate how to set a variable in HTML that applies WebFOCUS DBA
security to a WebFOCUS report.
Our task is to take a value and move it from the
HTML user screen to the CGI and,ultimately, to
the EDA Server so it can be manipulated in
FOCEXECs. Let’s start with the Master File
Description of the target data.
FILENAME=MLB
FDFC=19, FYRT=00
SEGNAME=LEAGUE
FIELD=H_LEAGUE
SEGNAME=DIVISION
ENT=LEAGUE, $
FIELD=H_DIVISION
SEGNAME=SPLIT
ENT=DIVISION, $
FIELD=SPLIT
SEGNAME=BATTER
ENT=SPLIT, $
FIELD=B_ID
FIELD=B_TEAM
TEAM ABBREV.
FIELD=B_NAME
LAST NAMEFIELD=B_FULLNAME
FIRST-LAST NAME
FIELD=B_STATUS
STATUS
FIELD=B_POS
POSITION
FIELD=B_AVG
BATTING AVERAGE
FIELD=B_BAT
NUMBER OF AT BATS
FIELD=B_HIT
NUMBER OF HITS
.
.
.

, SUFFIX=FOC

,

, SEGTYPE=S1 , $
, , A2 , $ LEAGUE
, SEGTYPE=S1 , PAR, , A4 , $ DIVISION
, SEGTYPE=S1 , PAR, , A9 , $ SPLIT
, SEGTYPE=S1 , PAR, , A4 , $ PLAYER ID#
, , A3 , $ PLAYER
, , A12, $ PLAYER
, , A23, $...