1995-05-17: Web forms, cgi programs

Summary of May 17 Web-Walkers Meeting

Summary of May 17 Web-Walkers Meeting

Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 10:20:20 -0400
From: Judy Hallman 
To: web-walkers@unc.edu
Subject: Summary of May 17 Web-Walkers Meeting

Summary of May 17 Web-Walkers meeting on Web forms, cgi programs, and ADP's direction (particularly with regard to the Netscape secure server and the Windows server), with a few additions from Joel Dunn

[Thanks to Bob Schreiner for his notes.]

Joel Dunn, Administrative Data Processing (ADP), gave an excellent presentation to a group of 40-50 Web-Walkers.

We began the meeting with the usual question/answer session.

Q: How do you get your server registered, so that your information is included in the big indexes?

A: You can tell Yahoo and NCSA. On the other hand, if your stay out there long enough, you'll be discovered. Cindy Rhine offered to send a message to the Web-Walkers list describing the registration process.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 09:23:12 -0400
From: Cynthia Rhine 
To: Multiple recipients of list 
Subject: registering www pages


Since there's not formal registration for world wide web, here
are some suggested places to send announcements with the status
of your page:

        www-announce@wwwO.cern.ch
        comp.infosystems.announce
        www-request@info.cern.ch
        whats-new@ncsa.uiuc.edu

Also, be sure and keep meaningful titles in your highest level headers
since some indexers will index titles and major headers.

You might want to also check out the book "Managing Internet Information
Services" published by O'Reilly - it's in the bookstore and is where
I got the above mentioned newsgroups and  lists from.  It has good
overview of setting up web servers and home pages.

--Cindy Rhine
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Servers

Joel started by discussing the Netscape secure server. ADP and security are almost synonymous. ADP is very interested in using emerging technology to present information. For example, ADP provides the UNC-CH Email ID Database Lookup, which uses a Sybase interface. They can do much more with a secure system -- for example, grades and student information.

When ADP purchased Netscape, they had to certify that they really are ADP, the Administrative Data Processing department of UNC-Chapel Hill. Then they could get their public key from RSA. That has been done.

ADP will use the Netscape server to develop forms-based applications; they want to integrate enterprise information into the Web.

Joel pointed out that information provided by the Netscape server can only be viewed using the Netscape browser, but that will not be a problem because Netscape is the browser of choice of the UNC-CH campus (support by OIT).

ADP is also testing a Windows server.

Joel then described the public/private key encryption concept. "I give you my public key, but only my private key can decode my public key." He suggests that you not put your public key in your signature line on e-mail messages, but put it in your finger file and tell people to finger you to get your key. Then people will always get your latest public key. The reason you might change your public key is that if someone steals your private key, you need to make sure everyone else stops using
it. For example, if your public key was published in a phone book and it the matching private key was stolen (or just lost), people who used that old public key would not get the desired security.

The Netscape browser gets the public key of the server and generates a session key.

Besides the Netscape server, ADP will be using the 1.3 NCSA server and the Windows server.

The ADP secure web server is at "https://www-s1.adp.unc.edu/" Most links from this page are not secure (they are back to "www.adp.unc.edu", but the campus directory link via
Sybase is secure, for example). This way folks can actually see what
happens (security messages, "whole" key, etc.) when they use Netscape security.

Application Development with HTML

Joel then talked from his Master's thesis, Application Development with HTML, at http://www.adp.unc.edu/wwwclass, Chapter 5, "What is an HTML Application?" In that section, he scrolled down a few pages to the section beginning, "A major feature that differentiates HTML from static markup languages is the "&ltFORM&gt ...&lt/FORM&gt" identifier. " [It's 3 paragraphs above Example 5.2.]. And he worked through that section.

Essentially, he said that forms add interactive capabilities to HTML applications. The Web server processes data gathered from the browser and invokes an operating system script file with the parameter gleaned from the form. This is called the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) in the HTTP daemon.

Joel described the html code for a sample form (Example 5.2) and its presentation (shown in Figure 5.3) and then gave a live example by clicking on the "live example" hot link in his paper!

He also described the code that processes the form (Example 5.3). The processing can be done by a perl script, Bourne shell, C shell, C program, ... whatever. The program processes the values taken from the browser. There are environment variables that can be used in the program.

Joel then described and demonstrated an application that looks at who's logged on and fingers someone. The selections (userids) are given in a scroll bar. (See Example 5.5, Figure 5.5, and Example 5.6.)

Again, Joel ran the application by clicking on "run the form" in his paper. He selected Mary Overby's userid and showed her finger file, complete with her home page and work plan. Then he showed his finger file, which has his picture as a link to his home page, and has the Netscape PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) public encryption key at the bottom of the file.

Next, Joel gave us a brief tour of the ADP home page -- http://www.adp.unc.edu/, showing "Search and Directory Utilities," and then "UNC-CH Email ID Database Lookup," which generates an SQL query.

In the "ADP Applications" section (on the home page), he showed "UNC Organizations List," which runs on a server on a very old PC. This Visual Basic program shows the potential for being able to search files by running IDMS or Sybase on the ADP mainframe.

Joel then brought up http://www.charm.net/~web/Vlib/Providers/CGI.html, which has a lot of CGI scripts.

Atttendees:

Ron Bennet, Registrar's Office

Rodney Bishop, Registrar's Office

Lea Blanton, Friday Center

Bonnie Bowen, ADP

Paula Carson, SIS Coordinator

Kathleen Crook, Sheps Ctr. for HSR

Nancy Doyle, ADP/Registrar

Lynn Eades, HSL

Brian Flynn, Nursing

Scott Freeman, ADP

Shirley Gunter, General College

Judy Hallman, OIT

Jeff Harrell

Tom Hocking, Morehead Planetarium

D. Jarrell, OIT

Nancy Jesser, OIT

David Johnston, Arts & Sciences

Joanne Kucharski, Registrar's Office

Ken Langley, OIS

John Meeker, Pharmacy

Deb Morley, ADP

Tim Murphy, OCIS

Jim Murrell, OIT

Mary Overby, ADP

Wendy Perry, ADP

Clarence Potter, SOM/GCRC

Cindy Rhine, City & Regional Planning

Bob Schreiner, SPH

Eric Sessoms, General College

Dennis Sherman, TRLN

Tom Sherrod, ADP

Kathy Thomas, OIT

Chery Ward, CPC

Judy Hallman (judy_hallman@unc.edu)

Office of Information Technology

  


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1995 Jun 01

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