Hi everybody. I've been using databases for a long time but now I need to do
something a little different. I need to access databases on-line through a
www explorer.

So, I have a few questions:

1) More or less, how does one achieve this ?
2) What DBMS do I need ?
3) Do I need and specialized server to attend the user requeriments or can I
put my pages in a host server from a an ISP ?

The idea is this: user get into www.SOMETHING.com and then can search some
information, like if there are items in stock, etc.
Important note: nothing will be sell in this site, It will be only
information to search for.

Thanks a lot for you ideas,
Juan

There are a lot of products that can do that, and many of them are sold by
the DBMS manufacturers,

Doing with Delphi :
  1.- You can do it even with Paradox or DBase
  2.- You need to install BDE and the programs you develop in the Web
Server, which is no problem if you own the host but could be a problem if
you rent space in a supplier's host. It depends on your host supplier
policies.
  3.- You need to develop a Web Server (Delphi 3 and further) application
  4.- The application receives parameters from apllication by URI sintax p.
ej.
            www.mydomain.com\cgi-bin\MyApp.exe\MyAction&MyParameter=Value
        and respond by creating the corresponding HTML code with a
TPageProducer or    a     TTableProducer or similar components.

This is explained very poor, you should check the WebServer demo application
in your delphi demos directory and learn more about WebActions, responses
and some other stuff

I've done it in a very simple program (just receives data from a HTML format
and sends the content to an e-mail address) and I also have done a more
complete system accesing Informix but with a Domino Notes database and
agents.
--
Ing. Eduardo Martnez Ocampo
Chief Of Information Systems
Industria Envasadora de Quertaro, S.A. de C.V.
The Coca-Cola Canning Plant
eduar...@ieqsa.com.mx