Web-based Database Applications

Many companies are turning to Web-based applications to provide easy access to employees spread all over the world. Once on the Web, you have near-universal access; all you need is an Internet connection and a Web browser. Depending on the application's requirements, this is great news for Linux users.

So long as the Web application isn't locked into something dumb, such as a particular version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer on Windows (IE-only Web applications usually lock out IE on the Macintosh, too), you can access the application from Linux. Like the old New Yorker cartoon that no one on the Internet knows you are a dog, no one knows or cares that you are running Linux.

Netscape's browser runs on most versions of Linux, as does Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, and a host of other browsers, so a modern browser be available. Since many Web applications are driven by data, this makes Web-based database front ends an intriguing way to replace low-end database applications, such as those built on top of Microsoft Access.

In an earlier dispatch, I mentioned QuickBase from Intuit (maker of the Quicken accounting package) (http://www.quickbase.com). QuickBase holds your data on Intuit's servers, which you access over the Web in what used to be called an Application Service Provider, or ASP, model. Typically, you pay a monthly fee for the service, starting at $14.95 US for the low-end service. So long as you are comfortable with someone else holding your data, this can be an easy and cheap way to create a data-driven Web application and replace simple desktop-bound database applications. Users also benefit from being able to access the data from an off site locations.

Another company in this market that appears very friendly to open-source projects is Zapatec (http://www.zapatec.com). Zapatec also acts like an ASP, hosting a database and Web-application environment. Zapatec's database runs PostgreSQL and uses the Java-based Tomcat servlet engine from the Apache project to drive the Web application, both popular open-source products.

With Zapatec, you write your business logic for your application using the open-source BeanShell Java-based scripting language. This is an interesting solution to the problem of how you can write software and install it on Zapatec's remote servers. In this case, the software you write is all text, in the form of BeanShell scripts.

The only really odd thing in the Zapatec offering is the use of Zapapages, Zapatec's replacement for JSP, ASP, XSP, and a zillion other schemes to meld HTML and program logic. You can read an online tutorial at http://www.zapatec.com/website/main/tutorial.form. Zapatec also provides its manuals online.

Zapatec appears very friendly to open-source projects. You can apply to have Zapatec waive the fee for their mid-priced "Shared 2" offering. The low-end offering is also free, but provides less storage space.

With either of these two packages, you should be able to replace many Access-based applications, and provide greater access for your users, if you are comfortable locating your data on someone else's servers.