Do you have a Windows, Silverlight or Windows Phone application that needs to access a database on the Web?  Would you like to be able to open a connection to a SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSql or MySQL database that resides on any server on the Internet, and issue SQL commands and obtain query results?  Well you can with SqlWeb.  Its based completely on Web standards and implements a very simple pass-through system to the SQL database. You only need to copy a few files up to your webserver and away you go!

This diagram shows how the SqlWeb.NET DLL connects to your database through a webserver using standard HTTP POST. You only need to copy our server files (ASPX, ASP or PHP) to your webserver so the SqlWeb.NET DLL can call them to access the database.  They act as the gateway between the database and your client application.

The client DLL is compiled for .NET, Silverlight and Windows Phone. It connects to the server using standard HTTP (POST) and XML. The SQL commands are extracted from the HTTP call and passed through to the database.  This is essentially a specialized SOAP (Web Service) system. However, the XML protocol extremely lightweight - much lighter than any Web Service and much easier to use and deploy.

Here are some important points to know about SqlWeb: Non-proprietary, so you're not locked in to anyone's server tools.  SqlWeb is sold as a source code kit, so you have complete control over the future of your own product (server files and .NET DLL).   Its based on open protocols, such as HTTP/OLEDB/ODBC   Extendable - SqlWeb.NET is sold as as source code kit - you get the source code so you can extend it as needed and create your own new handlers   Small and lightweight and very fast   Easy to deploy and use - just FTP a few files up to your webserver and away you go. No intervention is required by your ISP   3 different compiled versions for Silverlight, Windows Phone and .NET   Can be used with AJAX in webpages. Since the client and server communicate with HTTP/XML, there is no reason why a javascript client couldn't be created   No dependencies on the .NET Data namespace   Supports secure SSL connections   Supports Proxy server connections   COM DLL version available

SqlWeb uses our open source FileDb DLL to package up the data after the XML has been parsed on the client. This is because we need to have some sort of DataTable to hand back to the caller to be able to access the data. We can't use the .NET DataTable because that would require making the whole System.Data namespace a dependency, which is not a good idea since it wouldn't work on Windows Phone (besides being too bloated for our needs). FileDb is our own Open Source project which you can see here on Google Code (code.google.com/p/filedb-database). Its also small and fast and also has compiled versions for Silverlight and Windows Phone.

Sold as a Source Code Kit

We know how important it is for you to have complete control of the future of your product.  You need be able to make your own modifications, especially when there are so many different databases to support, each with their own nuances.  For this reason we sell SqlWeb.NET as a source code kit*.  This way you are not dependent on us for bug fixes and enhancements.  You get all .NET source code for the client DLL projects and the ASP.NET server project .

* We do sell the server files without the source code (ASP.NET - ASP and PHP are always source code) for those who only want to use the SqlWeb Explorer to access their remote databases.

Using SqlWeb

Its extremely easy to make a connection to a server and fetch data down to your application.  The first step is to copy/FTP the server files up to your webserver.  Let's say you put them in a folder off the website root named sqlweb.   Here's how you would connect to a remote database:

const string hostName = "www.eztools-software.com",              connStr = "Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=Northwind;User ID=eval;Password=12345",              DriverTypeName = "SqlServer", // must be one of SqlServer, OLEDB, ODBC when using ASPX              serverPath = "sqlweb"; ServerTypeEnum serverType = ServerTypeEnum.ASPX; SqlWebNs.Connection sqlWebConn = new Connection(); Reply reply = sqlWebConn.Connect( hostName, serverPath, connStr, serverType, DriverTypeName ); if( reply.Result != 0 )     ; // check reply.Errors to see what went wrong

To fetch some data we only need to call Connection.Execute, like this:

Reply reply = sqlWebConn.Execute( "select * from Products", CmdTypeEnum.Text, true ); if( reply.Result == 0 ) {     foreach( Record record in reply.DataTable )     {         foreach( Field field in reply.DataTable.Fields )         {             Debug.WriteLine( string.Format( "Field: {0} Value: {1}", field.Name, record[field.Name] ) );         }         Debug.WriteLine( string.Empty );     } }

As you can see, using SqlWeb in your programs is very easy.  No other solution works as simply and reliably.  Why not download the DLL and test against our sample database on our webserver?  The SqlWeb Explorer is part of the download package, so you can see the power of SqlWeb in action.  The Explorer uses the SqlWeb.NET DLL in the same way your applications will use it.