I will respond, becuase this is the sort of things I have been working specifically for 3 years.

There is alot of technology out there, and already prewritten apps out there which do this sort of thing. But written in VFP . Not likley. this would be one of the best places to find such a thing however if it does exist.

My first thoughts would be for you to look into standard Web Indexing utilities out there, Some are Free, some charge a monthy fee.

What I am talking about is a private google, or private yahoo. The searching they do is using index keywords. which read throght you html pages (static pages) sitting on a web server. They generate a 'index' of the keywords on the page ... you run a search for those keywords and listings of the titles of the html docs come up with links to the pages.

HTdig / Atoms Search WebGlimpse (actually Front page a s smaller one built into it ) but it craps out at about 1000 pages indexed.

This by far is the quickest way to create a knowldge base type app. Publish your docs in either pdf or html and run a internet search utility on your web site, and within minutes your site is indexed, and you have a fully functional searchable web site running.

No VFP No cgi scripts just a bunch of docs searchable.

http://www.atomz.com/ is one such engine.

HTDig is a free client side utility with might also work.

But if you are set on using VFP as your data engine. Here is what you will need to look at
1 get a NT web server (IIS) with the latest patches. for security sake.
2 get some VFP to Web Connection software ( WestWind Or foxweb, and AFPWeb an so on. )
3 write prgs - classes which do the actual searching on the dbf, and then convert the data back to html for displaying in the web server.

There are free utilities which help in converting the dbf data to html.

Before you go down the trek on getting VFP on the web, (which can be done) an often times there is good reason for it... if you data is not already in a dbf, but say your data is currently in word docs, you might just consider not putting in a dbf right now, But try what I suggested, just post it to your web server and index the docs.

Bob Lee






>We have a corporate web site that needs a data-driven FAQ or knowledgebase page. We'd like to keep the knowledgebase articles in a DBF table, let the user specify search keywords, and produce a results page itemizing the articles. Pretty basic stuff right? Not unlike the UT does itself.
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>So how do I go about it? We have a dedicated server currently running UNIX. I suppose the first thing is that it would have to be a WinNT box to support a VFP app? Luckily, there isn't much on it now and we haven't moved our main site to it yet so we can reconfigure if necessary.
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>Are there canned apps that will do this? Is there a particular book(s) I should read? I know VFP pretty well but, as you can tell, I know almost nothing about server-based apps. I'd like to take this opportunity to learn about it but, frankly, I'm swamped with work and would sooner take the easy path if there is one. Cashflow is tight too so I'd hire a UT member if he/she wanted to barter for space on our server.
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>Also, I'm using VFP6 and don't think that I'll be in a position to switch to VFP7 for a few months, if that matters.
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>Thanks for heading me in the right direction.
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>-Bob