Alan AMBERS wrote:

> We are using VTLS Library software (release 1994) on a HP 3000 with our
> web server (NCSA) on a HP 9000.  There is a desire to get WWW access to
> the VTLS database.  I believe there is a purchase product from VTLS to do
> this, but I am wondering if anybody out there is currently doing this and
> if so, HOW?

Well, there's good news and bad news :-)

If you are on release 1994 1.13 or above, you can get the Virtua Web
Interface (maybe not exact name; I'm not the library expert, I just
manage their machine).  This consists of:
* several perl scripts to do the forms and html,
* some more perl scripts to act as "slaves" - they open a telnet session
  to the VTLS host and run a tweaked version of the LIBBIE mainline code.
* The cgi scripts talk to a slave which in turn passes search criteria to
  LIBBIE and it feeds the results back.  The cgi script then formats it
  into HTML and throws it on the screen.

The bad news :-(

The perl scripts are pretty involved (dynamically-loaded perl modules,
named-pipes, etc) and they would not work with the currently-available
versions of perl.  It may be possible with Mark Klein's latest and
greatest port, but I've dropped the issue in priority since the library
bought a small Sun Netra box to do the web dirty work.  It does however
telnet fine to our DTC telnet access card and appears to work with the
host-based telnet server/ix in 5.5 (though VTLS hasn't really blessed
their base package on 5.5 yet, I don't think).  I did give it one heck
of a try though to avoid Yet Another Sun :-)  If I do get it to work as
time permits I'll be sure to post an update.

If you want to have a look - http://www.lib.utc.edu/virtua/search.html.

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>