jcocon@hubcap.clemson.edu (james c oconnor) (12/13/90)
I am going to be programming a Macintosh front end to our campus online databases for the library. Attachment could be either by serial line to a controller, or over ethernet. Could someone who has experience please drop me a line with advice on texts, methods, etc? I envision feeding the mainframe db product with generated prompts from user input, then buffering and parsing the output so that the Mac can do smart things with it, like feed it into a different database queury engine. Also, I am looking at using HyperCard 2.0 as the front end and doing most of the actual work in xcmds. Thanks, Jim
bkuo@girtab.usc.edu (Benjamin Kuo) (12/15/90)
I'm at the University of Southern California, where they've just implemented a HyperCard front end to the databases (expanding the former 1-database for books terminals to a multi-database, multi-field, etc. system). I think it's HC 1.2.5, I know it's running on the campus Ethernet system, I heard that they're using a similar system (ie send parameters from the mac, have the mainframe do the searching, redisplay on the Mac). It's really pretty good, except the fact that the network does hang occasionally (XCMD serials having problems?)--particularly at busy hours. The system was designed by an outside company, but maybe someone else here knows where they can be contacted...