Question:
I am building a Web application using ASP and XML. My database calls are directed to a server with a Java servlet over HTTP. It works fine except when I turn off the servlet and do a send on the XMLHTTP object?then the ASP breaks. How can I catch the error when the servlet is down?
Answer:
If you are using the XMLHTTP object on the server, the answer is simple: don’t use the XMLHTTP object. For both performance and domain reasons, Microsoft does not recommend the XMLHTTP component for use in server-side code. That may change (they are in the process of revising this code for their next parser), but for the moment at least this holds true. Instead, you may want to think about just using the xmlDoc.load method instead. You can make the call asynchronous and catch an event header when the oncontentready event gets fired. Then just check the .parseError.reason to ascertain whether the call was successful or not.