Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2014 v.13 - Manual (Page 604)

6. You can restrict the number of database items Dreamweaver retrieves at design time by clicking Advanced and entering a schema or
catalog name.
Note: You cannot create a schema or catalog in Microsoft Access.
7. Click Test to connect to the database, and then click OK. If the connection fails, double-check the connection string or check the settings for
the testing folder Dreamweaver uses to process dynamic pages.
Connecting to a database on an ISP
If you’re an ASP developer working with a commercial Internet service provider (ISP), you often don’t know the physical path of the files you
upload, including your database file or files.
If your ISP doesn’t define a DSN for you or is slow to do so, you must find another way to create the connections to your database files. One
alternative is to create a DSN-less connection to a database file, but you can define such a connection only if you know the physical path of the
database file on the ISP server.
You can obtain the physical path of a database file on a server by using the MapPath method of the ASP server object.
Note: The techniques discussed in this section apply only if your database is file-based, such as a Microsoft Access database where data is
stored in an .mdb file.
Understanding physical and virtual paths
After using Dreamweaver to upload your files to a remote server, the files reside in a folder in the server’s local directory tree. For example, on a
server running Microsoft IIS, the path to your home page could be as follows:
c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\accounts\users\jsmith\index.htm
This path is known as the physical path to your file.
The URL to open your file, however, does not use the physical path. It uses the name of the server or domain followed by a virtual path, as in the
following example:
www.plutoserve.com/jsmith/index.htm
The virtual path, /jsmith/index.htm, stands in for the physical path, c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\accounts\users\jsmith\index.htm.
Find a file’s physical path with the virtual path
If you work with an ISP, you don’t always know the physical path to the files you upload. ISPs typically provide you with an FTP host, possibly a
host directory, and a login name and password. ISPs also specify a URL to view your pages on the Internet, such as www.plutoserve.com/jsmith/.
If you know the URL, then you can get the file’s virtual path—it’s the path that follows the server or domain name in a URL. Once you know the
virtual path, you can get the file’s physical path on the server using the MapPath method.
The MapPath method takes the virtual path as an argument and returns the file’s physical path and filename. Here’s the method’s syntax:
Server.MapPath("/virtualpath")
If a file’s virtual path is /jsmith/index.htm, then the following expression returns its physical path:
Server.MapPath("/jsmith/index.htm")
You can experiment with the MapPath method as follows.
1. Open an ASP page in Dreamweaver and switch to Code view (View > Code).
2. Enter the following expression in the page’s HTML code.
<%Response.Write(stringvariable)%>
3. Use the MapPath method to obtain a value for the stringvariable argument.
Here’s an example:
<% Response.Write(Server.MapPath("/jsmith/index.htm")) %>
4. Switch to Live view (View > Live View) to view the page.
The page displays the physical path of the file on the application server, for example:
c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\accounts\users\jsmith\index.htm
For more information on the MapPath method, consult the online documentation that comes with Microsoft IIS.
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