February 25, 2000

Question: I want to create a three-tier application that has a browser front end and a Visual Basic middle-tier. How do I access my VB code from ASP? Should I compile my code as a DLL or as an EXE? Answer: First, create your VB app as an ActiveX DLL.

Question: We have an ASP page that displays product information from a database. We also have a button to download/view a related PDF file that should only appear on the page if the PDF file physically exists. We used Request.ServerVariables(“APPL_PHYSICAL_PATH”) to determine the path to check whether the file exists.

Question: I have data (text + CR + LF) stored in SQL Server 6.5 as a TEXT data type. When I want to display the data on an ASP page, the text loses its format. If I use TEXT INPUT on my ASP, it works fine but I need to

import java.util.*;import java.io.*;class Class1 { static Vector split(String string,String delimiter) { //StringTokenizer that works with empty strings boolean wasDelimiter=true; String token=null; Vector vector=new Vector(); if(string!=null) for(StringTokenizer stringTokenizer=new StringTokenizer(string,delimiter,true);stringTokenizer.hasMoreTokens();) { if((token=stringTokenizer.nextToken()).equals(delimiter)) { token=wasDelimiter?””:null; wasDelimiter=true; } else wasDelimiter=false; if(token!=null) vector.addElement(token); } return vector; } static boolean test(String original,String delimiter) { // split,

The JComboBox API provides a programmer with very little directcontrol over how list items are displayed. This is because, in trueobject-oriented fashion, a JComboBox object knows or cares very littleabout the items it displays to the user. It only knows that itdisplays Components, which it gets from its ListCellRenderer’sgetListCellRendererComponent() method.

This tip is probably cosmetic, but it could result in great convenience. Doing a [import java.package.*] would allow usage of [public] classes in theaforementioned package without the usual required verbosity. This means that [java.package.class1] and [class1] would mean the same thing(and be legal as well). But one thing about it

At times you want to output the numeric values in specific format, for example, you may want to display monetary value with two decimal points, or scientific data with five decimal point places or an exponent. You can use NumberFormat class from java.text package for this. Here is some sample