Topic group

When dBASE Plus applications are launched in typical fashion, by directly invoking the application .EXE, they are run on Windows as two processes - one for the application .EXE, and one for the runtime engine (PLUSrun.exe). By invoking PLUSrun.exe directly, and passing the name of the application executable to it as a parameter, it is possible to run dBASE Plus applications as a single process. This is, however, not true for dBASE Plus web applications, since PLUSrun.exe itself must be deployed in a CGI-enabled folder in order to run.

The solution is to employ application mapping techniques. On a website with a high volume of dBASE Plus web application calls, server resources can be conserved and the potential for problems reduced by mapping those web application executables directly to the runtime engine.

When mapping dBASE Plus web applications, you must give the executables a unique extension other than .EXE. For the purpose of this discussion we'll use the extension .DBW. When invoked, dBASE Plus executables that are appropriately mapped to PLUSrun.exe and provided a valid extension (.DBW), are treated by a web server as if they were scripts to be handled by an interpreter, e.g. a Perl script.

dBASE Plus Web Application Mapping Using the Windows Registry

Many web servers, Apache and Sambar for example, can use the Windows registry to determine how to handle application scripts. dBASE Plus web applications can be mapped for these web servers as follows. We'll essentially create a new Windows 'File Type' with the extension .DBW. To do this in Windows NT:

  1. Open Windows Explorer or any folder window.

  2. Select View|Options.

  3. Select the "File Types" tab.

  4. Click the "New Type" button.

  5. Type "dBASE Plus Web Applet" (without quotes) in the Description of type: field.

  6. Type ".dbw" (without quotes) in the Associated extension: field.

  7. Type "application/dbw'"(without quotes) in the Content Type (MIME): field.

  8. Under the Actions: pane, click the "New" button.

  9. In the resulting dialog, type "Open" (without quotes) in the Action: field.

  10. In the Application used to perform action: field, type:

  "<full path to PLUSrun.exe>\PLUSrun.exe" "%1"

You may use the "Browse" button to locate PLUSrun.exe - don't forget to delimit the result with quotes.

  1. Click "OK".

  2. Optionally, choose an icon for .DBW files.

  3. Click "Close".

Apache

For Apache to use this file type you'll need to locate and uncomment (or add if missing) the following directive to the Apache configuration file (httpd.conf):

  ScriptInterpreterSource registry

dBASE Plus Web Application Mapping for IIS

  1. Launch the MMC for IIS.

  2. Stop the web site, if started.

  3. Right-click a folder used/enabled for CGI applets.

  4. Select "Properties".

  5. Select the "Directory" (or "Virtual Directory") tab.

  6. In the Application Settings box, click the "Create" button if an 'Application' has yet to be created.

  7. Click the "Configuration" button.

  8. Select the "App Mappings" tab, click the "Add" button.

  9. In the Executable field, enter:

  "<full path to PLUSrun.exe>\PLUSrun.exe" "%s"

The "%s" parameter is case sensitive: "%S" will not work.

You may use the "Browse" button to locate PLUSrun.exe.

Don't forget to delimit the result with quotes.

  1. In the Extension field, enter:

  .dbw

  1. Click "OK" to exit each dialog.

  2. Start the web site