application ideas - slightly OT

[Mike D]

I have been working on a client side app to interface with a balance
connected to a pc. My app uses RS-232 and the MSComm component in vb or
vb.net to receive data and send commands to the balance. There will be
server side things to do with the data such as database insert, .pdf creation
for archival etc.

How to do this in an asp page. I would like to have this available over our
intranet. Each client pc would have to have the cableing and the balance.
Would I use an activex control to connect to the server. Can a asp page
determine if a client side component has been downloaded and installed and if
not provide the latest download. I can limit use to IE (ver. X) and force
download of components.

Would it benefit me going to the web??

Thanks for any replies
Mike

 

[Mark Schupp]

ASP cannot do anything with client-side components. But it can generate an
HTML page that can have the browser check for the latest component version.
See the CODEBASE attribute of the OBJECT tag.

 

[Tom Kaminski [MVP]]

I have been working on a client side app to interface with a balance
connected to a pc. My app uses RS-232 and the MSComm component in vb or
vb.net to receive data and send commands to the balance. There will be
server side things to do with the data such as database insert, .pdf
creation
for archival etc.

How to do this in an asp page. I would like to have this available over
our
intranet. Each client pc would have to have the cableing and the balance.
Would I use an activex control to connect to the server. Can a asp page
determine if a client side component has been downloaded and installed and
if
not provide the latest download?

No - but IE/ActiveX does this by default using the codebase property.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/codebase.asp