I got DBMan up and running: great program and well documented ! The program is used for a referencelist of Oracle and other IT-related books, and the 'real' list is maintained at home using an Oracle database. I made a little program that produces the delimited file for DBMan. However, the database file is there online for everybody to take it and import in their own database. What could I do to stop people doing that ? What I don't want is that everybody has to log on. Could something be done to protect the database file ? I'd appreciate any help on this subject.

------------------
Regards,
Mike Philippens

Hi Mike,

When you mean it's on the web for everyone to look at, do you mean that somebody could type in the URL directly to your default.db file and download it?

If so, then move the file into a non viewable part of your website, either cgi-bin or outside of the document tree and update the path in the config accordingly.

If you mean that people could go through your website and parse all the links, then there is little you can do. You could write a simple 'jump.cgi' program that takes a database ID and redirect to that ID's URL (which is what Links does). That makes it more difficult to steal all the links, but not by any means impossible.

Cheers,

Alex

Alex,
I mean that everybody could download the database file.
Tried to do what you suggested, and guess what: It worked ! I thought that the users must be able to 'see' the directory in order to use it, but now I see how it works it makes perfect sense.

The whole idea is that everybody can search and view the whole database, but I would not want somebody to 'steal' my work and start taking credit for it or making money with it.

Thanks a lot! Keep up the good CGI work.

------------------
Regards,
Mike Philippens