You did go all the way through Lesson 1, right? You didn't just jump to this page for quickie guidelines to connecting your database to the Web server, did you? Well, I can't stop you from getting ahead of yourself, but please, for your own safety, at least look at Lesson 1, page three, where I covered the installation of Personal Web Server for Windows 95 and 98 and NT Workstation. Don't proceed unless you have one of those installed and you know the location of your default Web serving directory.
Molto bene.
You've downloaded the database from this lesson, page five. Now go into your Control Panels and double-click on the ODBC icon. For those of you with older versions of Windows 95, you may have two ODBC items. Select the one with 32 in the middle of the icon.
In the window that appears, click on the Systems DSN tab. From there, click the Add button.
On the next screen, select the type of database you're using (in this case, MS Access), then click Finish. The next screen is where we'll actually make the connection. Where it asks you for the Data Source Name, enter the word Parking, then click the Select button and choose the path to your database. Click OK.
If the database you're using doesn't show up in this screen, you're going to need to visit the Web site of your database provider and download the ODBC driver.
That's it, bub. Now you're ready to start pulling info from this database, which is what we'll be covering in Lesson 3.
But before you dub yourself a chick/dude magnet, you need to do your homework. To prepare for the next lesson, I'd like you to familiarize yourself with the look, feel, and functionality of our database's front end. Go ahead and download the files that will supply our front end, throw them into a directory that's available to your Web server, and open them up in your browser. Also, drag them into your text editor and look at the code.
If you're just too busy to do all that, at least take a look at some sample pages, and then click on the VIEW THE CODE link to get a look at the code that generated these files. (FYI: These sample pages aren't tied to an actual database, so any information you enter in the forms won't actually enter the database or populate other pages.)
When you finish this assignment, come back for Lesson 3, where we'll go over the jumble of text and code that makes up your database's front end.
Now get cracking!
