Tag Archives: asp

Web Development

ASP goes on a diet

I recently modified our custom mass mailer script to accept attachments. After the modifications the new functionality worked nicely, except when it didn’t. Sometimes the script would error out when it accessed the Request object. When this happened I would receive the following message:

Request object error ‘ASP 0104 : 80004005’ Operation not Allowed

Though the error messages produced by ASP tend to be a bit cryptic, Microsoft sometimes does a decent job of documenting them on their web site. A quick search revealed the problem: IIS 5.x and 6 have a default request limit of 200K. That’s sufficient in most situations where you would attach something to an email, but once you start attaching multiple documents there’s a chance you’ll need a higher limit. The fix is easy enough, but does require editing the IIS metabase. Setting the AspMaxRequestEntityAllowed property to an appropriate limit (in bytes, up to 1GB max) addresses the issue. I like to use metaedit to edit the metabase, but you can also use the command-line metabase editing script:

cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/ASPMaxRequestEntityAllowed 20971520

20971520 is the limit of the request size in bytes (20M in this case).

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IERI, MySQL, Web Development

Moving from Microsoft Access to MySQL

We recently decided to make a public release of an old web-based application coded in ASP (classic, using VBScript) and using Microsoft Access. In order to make this application public we need to make a few modifications, not the least of which is moving from Microsoft Access to MySQL. Using Microsoft Access on the back-end would significantly hamper the ability of the application to support concurrent users, among other issues.

The majority of the coding modifications have yet to be made, but the database switch has already occurred. In the process of moving from MS Access to MySQL I discovered a few settings that would be helpful should this action need to be performed for other applications. These settings should enable similar applications to be moved with minimal modification to the programming.

First, let’s review some settings related to the MySQL ODBC driver. The settings are relevant to all versions of the driver, but the name of the setting may be different on different versions (I’m using 5.1.6). Here are the options which should be selected:

  • Return matched rows instead of affected rows
  • Treat BIGINT columns as INT columns
  • Enable safe options

The following information relates more generally to changes that may have to be made in the code:

  • MySQL doesn’t really support server-side cursors so the ODBC drivers fakes it. This is, mostly, fine except that some properties of the Recordset object are not available (namely RecordCount). In order to get full cursor support you should change the location from the server to the client (adUseClient or the literal value 3).
  • ASP doesn’t understand non-signed integers. This causes problems when performing operations using these values unless you manually type the value in your script, e.g. scriptvar = CInt(objrs("dbcol")). The other solution is to make all integers signed. Otherwise you will see the error: Variable uses an Automation type not supported in VBScript.
  • Related to the above is the usage of values from the database in comparison functions. VBScript variables are typed (e.g. integer, string, boolean, etc.). Though you can’t specify the type during variable instantiation (with Dim) VBScript does pay attention to type when performing comparisons. When two variables of different types are compared you will get a “Type mismatch” error. The resolution is to Ctype your variables if you run into this type of error.
  • Finally, check your SQL statements for any VBA function calls. These will either have to be modified into MySQL-compatible function calls or removed from the SQL code altogether.

There are a number of issues that may be encountered when attempting to convert an ASP-based application from MS Access to MySQL. The issues addressed here are only those relevant to this particular application. Other applications may require additional or different solutions and settings.

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