ALSTRA(tm) 3.1 Readme



Copyright © 1997 Mirus Data AB, Avenyn 32, S-411 36 Goteborg, Sweden.

All Rights Reserved

Licensed to Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Massachusetts.



This document covers information that will help you install and use 

ALSTRA. Please read the entire document. 



For the latest news and product information be sure to check our web 

site at:

    http://www.software.digital.com/alstra 



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*** Contents ***

****************



  1.  Requirements

  2.  Installation

  3.  Documentation

  4.  Using MTS (Microsoft Transaction Server)

  5.  Building Web Clients



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*** 1. Requirements ***

***********************



To install and run ALSTRA, you need the following:



- A personal computer with a minimum 486 microprocessor, 16MB of RAM, 

  20MB of free disk space on your hard drive

- Windows 95 or Windows  NT

- Visual Basic 4.0 32 bits or Visual Basic 5.0, Professional or 

  Enterprise Edition

- ODBC Administrator

- One of the following databases:

	* Microsoft Access 7

	* Microsoft SQL Server 6.0 or later (6.5 for use with MTS) 

	* Oracle RDB 6.0 or later

	* Oracle 7.1 or later



The following software is required in order to successfully build and 

run a Web client: 



- Windows NT 4.0   

- Internet Explorer V3.02 including HTML Layout Control     

  (visit http://www.microsoft.com/ie and download IE Release 3.02      

  and HTML Layout Control add-on)   

- IIS 3.0 including Active Server Pages

  (visit http://www.microsoft.com/iis and download IIS Release 3.0) 

- ADC (Advanced Data Connector) 1.0 

  (visit http://www.microsoft.com/adc and download ADC Release 1.0) 



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*** 2. Installation ***

***********************



1.  Place the ALSTRA CD in your CD-ROM drive.

2.  Choose Run from the Start menu and enter D:\SETUP (where D:

    is your CD drive).

3.  Follow the instructions displayed on your screen to complete the

    installation.  





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*** 3. Documentation ***

************************



For full documentation, select 'Online Information' in the ALSTRA 3.1 

windows Program Group.



You can always get context sensitive help, by pressing the F1 key at 

any time while running ALSTRA.



To become familiar with ALSTRA concepts, see the Getting Started 

Step-by-Step in the ALSTRA Online Information System or move to the 

ALSTRA Concepts section of the Online Information System.



***************************************************

*** 4. Using MTS (Microsoft Transaction Server) ***

***************************************************



The following steps are involved when building a complete application:

(the use of MTS, Microsoft Transaction Server is optional)



1. Create Server COM/DCOM Objects

2. Create a Client Executable

3. Test Run the Client Executable



If you have requested the use of MTS, you must do the following before

running the Client EXE:



1. Enter the Transaction Server Explorer

2. Create a new Package by clicking on Packages Installed and select 

   New from the File menu.  Create an empty package using the name of 

   your Server project.

3. Create new components in your new package. Click on Components and 

   select New from the File menu.

   Choose Install new component(s) in the Component Wizard.

   Click Add Files to retrieve your created Server DLL file. Press 

   Finish.

4. Enter the Properties window for each of the new components. Select 

   the Transaction tab and set Transaction support to 

   ‘Requires a transaction’.

5. Start Microsoft Transaction Server.

   Click the right mouse button from My Computer and select 

   ‘Start MSDTC’.

6. Run the Client.



NOTE, that in order to run your application with Microsoft Transaction

Server, your datasource must be a SQL Server database.

To load the predefined demo database into SQL Server:



1. Create a database using the SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

2. Execute the SQL script file DEMOAPP.SQL in Query Tool (Tools menu).

   (Path ...\V31\DEMO\DEMOAPP\DBASE in the ALSTRA installation)

3. Define the database as a datasource in the ODBC Administrator.



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*** 5. Building Web-Clients ***

*******************************



This section contains the steps necessary to produce applications

using Web clients.



1. Perform the following steps on the Server project that will 

   be used to commnunicate with the web client:



	a) Open the referenced Server project in the Builder

	b) Open Visual Basic with the Server project

	c) From the Tools menu select References and add

	   a reference to 'Microsoft OLE DB ActiveX Data

	   Objects 1.0 Library'

	d) For all referenced Server COM objects (*D.CLS files):

	   - set the mCvEnableADC constant to 1

	   - set the mCbValidateBeforeSave constant to True

	e) Exit Visual Basic and return to the Builder

	f) Create a new Server EXE file or Server DLL file

	   (if MTS is being used)



2. Using the Builder, create the Client application specifying 

   'HTML & VBScript' as the Code Template Version when defining

   the project.



3. Run the Internet Services Manager, which is part of the 

   Microsoft Peer Web Services.  Be sure the WWW service is

   in a 'running' state.  	



4. From the Properties menu of the Internet Services Manager, 

   select Service Properties for the computer associated with

   the WWW service and perform the following:



	a) Be sure access is available to the server by providing 

	   a valid Username and Password in the Service tab.

	b) In the Directories tab add a pointer to the dataset\vbsrc

	   directory where the .HTM files are located.

	c) Add an Alias name for this directory.



5. If MTS is being used for this application start MTS and define and

   start the server package for this application.  Then start MSDTC

   (Note: More detailed MTS instructions are found in Section 4 of

   this document).



6. From the Internet Explorer open the desired module from the

   client application by specifying the .HTM file located in the

   alias directory.  



   For example, if the alias name for the client project directory

   was /alstra then from the localhost web server open desired 

   module in the VBSRC directory:



	http://localhost/alstra/my_mtab.htm























