HostedDatabase.com - Using Enterprise Features

The Enterprise Version of HostedDatabase.com offers valuable features not found in either the Standard or Premium account options. With Enterprise you can offer a secure database user environment for your website, where you can require users to login to the database so they may gain access to their own records. Enterprise allows an unlimited number of database users who access the database only from your website.

In some cases, you may choose to mix the non-secure (no login required) Premium account features with secure Enterprise features on the same website. For these situations, you'll need to use the link-in and/or custom HTML for both Premium and Enterprise, depending on your requirements. Be sure to use the appropriate web database publishing tool in your Control Panel to match your needs.

In this How To page, we'll see the steps required to put together a complete Enterprise database using HostedDatabase.com:

Step 1	Create your enterprise database by using our Web Database Publishing Wizard which walks you through a series of steps for defining a new database, and optionally uploading data from your desktop PC. You first must register as a HostedDatabase.com customer to create a database. Once you complete the wizard process, you'll have a usable database, but you still must turn on it's Enterprise features. To do this, go to your HostedDatabase.com Control Panel, click on Update Database Properties, select your database from the list, scroll down to the Enterprise Features section, and check the "Yes" box for the Enable Enterprise Features property. Now you'll be able to use the full extent of Enterprise features with this particular database.
Step 2	Next, you need to review the other Enterprise database properties, and make the necessary adjustments. Since you cannot set these properties during the wizard process, you can access them using the Update Database Properties tool in your Control Panel. Here is an explanation of these properties: What capabilities will you allow non-authenticated enterprise users to have? - This property allows you to define what type of access you wish to provide to users who are not required to login to the database. Add new data says that anonymous users may add new records. Search says that anonymous users may search the database. Both allows for both adding and searching records. None restricts database access to only users who login first. This property addresses the need to define access for two general groups of users for a particular database: authenticated and anonymous users. Who can assign login and password for users? - This property allows you to choose whether Only data author may create and assign new users for this database. This might be appropriate for private intranet applications where all the users of a database must be previously known to the Data Author (e.g. a corporate department). Alternately, you can choose User can create their own login account. The result of the latter option is that when HostedDatabase.com prompts for a user to login to a database, a link to sign up as a new user of the database is included. The default setting for this property is for Only data author to assign new users. Allow users to add new records? - This property allows you to choose whether users may add new records to the database. In some cases where the database is to be "read-only", this property may be set to No, which is the default setting. Allow users to edit existing records? - This property allows you to choose whether users may change the contents of existing records in the database. This property is used in conjunction with the data access property below to define the extent to which users may modify records. The default setting for this property is No. Allow users to delete records? - This property allows you to choose whether users may delete existing records in the database. This property is used in conjunction with the data access property below to define the extent to which users may modify records. The default setting for this property is No. What kind of update access should users have? - This property allows you to define the scope of access a user has when updating the database. The setting Update all data says that a user may update all records in a database regardless of what user they belong to. Alternately, Update only the data they entered limits the scope of updating to only the data records originally entered by that user, and is the default setting for this property. Specific update access is dictated by the add, edit, and delete properties described above. What kind of search access should users have? - This property allows you to define the scope of access a user has when searching the database. The setting Search all data says that a user may search all records in a database regardless of what user they belong to. Alternately, Search only the data they entered limits the scope of searching to only the data records originally entered by that user, and is the default setting for this property. URL to data entry page after user login - This property provides a URL link to follow after an Enterprise database user successfully logs in to the database. For example, this link could refer to a Web page on your site that contains a data entry form for adding new records to the database. URL to search criteria page after user login - This property provides a URL link to follow after an Enterprise database user successfully logs in to the database. For example, this link could be to a Web page on your site that contains a search criteria form for searching for records in a database. URL after user sign up - This property provides a URL link to follow after an Enterprise database user successfully signs up as a user of a database. For example, this link could be to a Web page on your site that contains a "Thank you for registering" message.
Step 3	The next step is to create users and assign user privileges for your Enterprise database. This is an optional step if you allow users to create their own accounts. Even if you allow users to create their own accounts, you may manually wish to create a small group of users having complete access to all records in the database (e.g. administrator users). To create users, click on the Update and maintain enterprise users from the Enterprise Database Tools section of the Control Panel. Enterprise User Profile form - This forms allows you to create enterprise users by entering the following information: first name, last name, e-mail address, login name, login password, and security settings. The security settings have counterparts at the database-level (and are used as defaults here), but user-level setting take precedence.
Step 4	The final step is to establish links and HTML pages that direct users back to HostedDatabase.com in order to access your Enterprise database. There are a number of ways to do this using a variety of Enterprise features available to you, but in general there are two primary ways to attach an Enterprise database to your site: (1) use simple links to generic, automatically generated pages on HostedDatabase.com, or (2) use HostedDatabase.com to generated HTML code that you can customized and place on your Web server. The following is a list of features found in the Enterprise Database Tools section of the Control Panel that provide this functionality: Generate the URL to link your enterprise database to a website - This is the simplest way you can link to your database. This feature generates the HTML code required to supply your users with the desired functionality: database updating or database searching. You can copy/paste the HTML code from the browser window into your favority HTML editor program, and save the page to your website. Using this method, you will not need to prepare any additional pages for your site. The drawback is that the resulting pages are rather generic in their layout. You can use the following features for more flexibility and customization. Generate HTML for enterprise user to sign up on their own - If you allow new users of your Enterprise database to sign up for access on their own, then you can use this function to generate the HTML form code, copy/paste into your HTML editor, and save the new page to your Web server. The form is tailored for the specific database you wish to integrate into your site. You can customize the look-and-feel of this form to match that of your site. When a new user uses this form to sign up, the Web address you specified in the URL after user sign up database property will be followed, presumably back to another page on your site (e.g. a "Welcome new user" page). Generate HTML for enterprise user to login before doing data entry - If you wish to set up an enterprise database data entry form, you can use this function to generate the HTML form code needed to accept the user login. You'd then copy/paste the code into your HTML editor, and save the new page to your Web server. The form is tailored for the specific database you wish to integrate into your site. You can customize the look-and-feel of this form to match that of your site. When a user uses this form to login, the Web address you specified in the URL to data entry page after user login database property will be followed, presumably to the Enterprise data entry form page. Generate HTML for enterprise user to login before doing a search - If you wish to set up an enterprise database search criteria form, you can use this function to generate the HTML form code needed to accept the user login. You'd then copy/paste the code into your HTML editor, and save the new page to your Web server. The form is tailored for the specific database you wish to integrate into your site. You can customize the look-and-feel of this form to match that of your site. When a user uses this form to login, the Web address you specified in the URL to search criteria page after user login database property will be followed, presumably to the Enterprise search criteria form page. Generate HTML for a data entry input form to integrate an Enterprise database to your website - If you wish provide your users with data entry capabilities for your Enterprise database, use this function to generate the HTML code for the form (you may optionally require users to login to the database prior to accessing this form). You'd then copy/past the code into your HTML editor, and save the new page to your Web server. The form is tailored for the specific database you wish to integrate into your site. You can customize the look-and-feel of this form to match that of your site. When a user uses this form to add data, the URL you specified in the URL to return to after data entry database property will be followed, presumably back to another page on your site (e.g. "Thank you for your entry"). Generate HTML for a search criteria form to integrate an Enterprise database to your website - If you wish provide your users with search capabilities for your Enterprise database, use this function to generate the HTML code for the form (you may optionally require users to login to the database prior to accessing this form). You'd then copy/past the code into your HTML editor, and save the new page to your Web server. The form is tailored for the specific database you wish to integrate into your site. You can customize the look-and-feel of this form to match that of your site. When a user uses this form to search for data, the URL you specified in the URL to return to after the search results database property will be followed, presumably back to another page on your site.