Alga Computing's QueryWeb - A Diamond In The Rough
Aug 10 '01 (Updated Aug 27 '01)
The Bottom Line Bottom Line: QueryWeb will do an excellent job of automating web creation from MS Access databases. Don't be put off by the lacklustre documentation.
QueryWeb is a cunning piece of software for Win9x/ME/NT/2k that helps Webmasters quickly publish vast MS Access tables and queries without having to arduously type out each piece of information. It also indirectly supports MS Excel tables.
QueryWeb is available as freeware (not spyware) from http://www.query-web.com with an optional donation to the programmer.
An Introductory Note: For this article, I will yak about some technicalities of databases and certain aspects of webmastering and programming in general. If this turns you off, your NH will be understood.
How Can This Program Help Webmasters?
Let's say you carefully developed an MS Access application with numerous tables and queries full of data about cars.
Alternately, you might have created an Excel table, and then imported it into Access. The table details part numbers, specifications, statistics and other information about many different models and years of automobiles.
What if you wanted to publish this database on the web?
You could just create some HTML tables and copy/paste the data into them, or better yet, just export the datasheets to HTML. Right? Right. It might take a while, but you want to get this done.
But what if...
-You added ten more cars to your database, or corrected some information? Do you want to go and pick out the data from your site and modify it as well? Do you want to have to re-export and re-format the HTML tables?
-You decide that it's better to have an abridged table with only a few pieces of information, and then let the user click on each item for a detailed datasheet? Are you willing to write all the code for this and create a datapage for each record?
What if you have thousands of entries? It would be a truly mind-numbing task.
QueryWeb can help webmasters by automating this process. QueryWeb does this via the use of standard HTML/XML/etc with SQL queries written into it. You don't need any SQL server software. All you have to do is program generic template files describing exactly which data to retrieve and where on the page to place it. Most likely, you would develop the template using a web design tool, and type in the code later. Then you hit go and let QueryWeb do all the page generation, grabbing data from the MS Access file and placing it in the page. If desired, you can have it generate a data page for a specified set of records, generated from a single template. For example, you could have separate template designs for Chevy, Volkswagen and Honda, with each template retrieving data from only those categories. Each template file would generate a group of finished files for publication on the web.
The development environments for these templaces are completely isolated. For example, you can have separate testing, development, final, etc., codebases for each project. And when you change your database, you can just regenerate the site based on the Access file and then upload the new data. No manual editing required!
Limitations of QueryWeb
This program actually has very few limitations. If you can write it in HTML, QueryWeb can generate pages from it. It can even work with CDF channel files! There are no problems with adding JavaScript, Server Side Includes, CGI Scripts, etc.
In terms of file types, QW can only read from MS Access '97. If you have a later version, you'll have to save in the earlier format. If you have StarOffice or another database, you're out of luck until the next version with more supported file formats becomes available.
One feature that I would have liked to have seen in the program is a search. It would be nice to be able to generate a page where the user enters a string and then related entries would be returned. Although the feature is not available, I found a way to do this: I generated a separate datapage for each entry, and then used KSearch, a free cgi search engine, to search the pages.
You have to know some SQL to use this program. SQL is a database language that allows you to retrieve and organise data from databases. I went to www.SQLCourse.com and took a short tutorial - within half an hour, I had the basic knowledge I needed to make QueryWeb do what I wanted. It was actually very easy.
Other Complaints
My main beef with QueryWeb is that the documentation really isn't that good at all. It doesn't explain all to clearly how to create a template, or what each of the presented statements actually does. I'm sure a lot of people ditched this program after discovering that the documentation was not that good. Fortunately, there are a pair of pre-made site-templates that can be dissected and act as a collection of usage tips in themselves. These are the primary method by which I was able to learn how to use this program.
My other, somewhat minor complaint, is that errors are sometimes spat out in Spanish. I suspect that the program was originally developed in Spanish, and this is a side effect. For the actual interface, you can choose from about six languages, but those error messages tend to be a little difficult to understand.
Fortunately, the creator of QW, Joseph Kvapil, is an extremely kind individual. Not only does he give his program away for an optional donation, but he allows you to e-mail him for help. On the occasions where I talked to him, he responded usually within an hour with some suggestions which got me back on the right track.
Some Closing Words
As you have probably guessed, I like QueryWeb. I really like it. At the moment, I'm working on a project that depends heavily on it to generate a section of a site from an Access Database.
The main reasons that I'm writing this article are that I think the program was well designed to fill a present niche. It is very powerful and doesn't get enough publicity. In addition, if I help someone who is trying to solve the problem that QW addresses, all the better!
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jucm
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The world is a conspiracy. You either know it or are part of it.
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