Applets / JDBC never the twain to meet?

[stephen decke]

Hi all.

Let me start by writing that I am new to Java which might explain my question.

I am looking to write a java applet that reads from a Access database table located on the same server. The applet reads the table and creates a formated family tree. The applet can also write new entries into the table.

I know about security exceptions during runtime - but is such a thing possible? That is to say if I upload the html page with the applet on it - can the applet happily read and write to the database if I set up permissions and so forth at the start and then just leave it?

If such an apparently straight foward way of creating my family tree thing is not possible - what would be the next most likely solution?

I would appreciate any advice to point me in the right direction..

Thanks All.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Welcome to JavaRanch.

Access requires an ODBC connection to be set up (in order for the JDBC/ODBC bridge to work), and I'm fairly certain that you can't do that over a TCP/IP network, through firewalls and all.

It might work if all machines running the applet (and the server with the Access DB) are on the same network, though.
[ June 29, 2007: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Stephen,
Welcome to JavaRanch!

While this question is on topic in both JDBC and Applets, I find people in the Applets forum know more about this stuff. I'm going to move your question there so you can get more responses.

[Chad Clites]

The only way I know of doing so is to pass the information to a servlet on the server, and let the servlet do the work. There are a ton of examples on the 'net, but the one I followed was here:
http://www.frank-buss.de/echoservlet/

Basically all this example does is takes a string, sends it to the servlet, and the servlet sends it back. I modified it to take a string as a parameter, query a database using that parameter, and return an arraylist to the applet. What ever you decide to return to the applet has to be serializable, otherwise it will not work properly.

I don't know if there is any more straight forward of a way to do it. IMHO, I would not want my applet to have direct access to my database anyway. I would want something on the server to make sure that the data was valid (not an attempt at SQL injection, etc), and just let the applet handle the display portion.

[george zhao]

To Chad Clites:

I totally agree with you.

I am a newbie too.

Now I am involved in a Project which was designed to use applet in client side,and let servlet handle data communication.

But I am not clear why you said "What ever you decide to return to the applet has to be serializable, otherwise it will not work properly."Could you please explain more?

I also doubt about why people like to use applet embeded in HTML page, because it could code event-drived likely?

Frankly to say, My first java class is about applet, Although i am not good at it now, I just like it.