Making HTML from Tables Building DayCart Interfaces with Perl, OCI and XML Michael A. Kappler Daylight CIS

Several ways of acquiring and presenting DayCart data is discussed. Perl is easy to program and OCI makes quick connections. XML abstracts the presentation layer from the acquisition layer.

Methods

• Common Gateway Interface
• Bourne Shell Script
• Practical Extraction and Report Language
• Extentable Markeup Language
• Oracle Call Interface
• DayCart
• PL/SQL
• SQL*Plus

CGI Code:

SERVER_PROTOCOL=HTTP/1.0

REMOTE_ADDR=192.168.1.33

REQUEST_METHOD=POST

export REQUEST_METHOD SERVER_PROTOCOL REMOTE_ADDR

cat <<__EOF__ | ./acd.xml

POST /oracgi/mick/acd.xml HTTP/1.0

Content-length: 25

insmi=CCO%0aCCCO

query=0.8

__EOF__

Bourne Shell Code:

#!/bin/sh

. ./dcgi_env.sh

eval `./post4eval`

echo "Content-type: text/html"

echo ""

(./acd_startup) 2>&1

Interfaces

• Perl
• Perl with XML
• OCI

Comments

Perl

• Easy to program
• Parsing is a problem
• Data and presentation are mixed

Perl with XML

• Very easy to program
• Parsing is not a problem
• Data and presentation are separate
• Requires XSLT library
• Slight computational cost

OCI

• Difficult to program
• Parsing is not a problem
• Data and presentation are mixed
• Requires Oracle library

OCI Code:

OCIHandleAlloc(envhp,(void**)&stmthp,OCI_HTYPE_STMT,0,(void*)0);

OCIStmtPrepare(stmthp,errhp, (unsigned char *)buffer, (int)strlen(buffer), OCI_NTV_SYNTAX,OCI_DEFAULT);

OCIDefineByPos(stmthp, &(defnp[i]), errhp, (ub4)i + 1, (dvoid *)data[i], (sb4)MAX_VARCHAR, (ub2)SQLT_STR, (dvoid *)&(ind[i]), (ub2 *)0, (ub2 *)0, (ub4)OCI_DEFAULT));

OCIStmtExecute(svchp, stmthp, errhp, 0, 0, (void*)0, (void*)0,OCI_DEFAULT);

OCIStmtFetch(stmthp,errhp,1,OCI_FETCH_NEXT,OCI_DEFAULT);