E2db Server Help File Part 1
Revision 5

Setting up E2db Server

1. What is E2db Server?
2. Requirements
3. How to request an evaluation license
4. How to purchase a full license
5. Installing a license
6. Quick Guide to E2db
7. E2db settings
   1. The Project tab
   2. Email accounts tab
   3. Rules tab
   4. Database tab
   5. Web form profile tab

What is E2db Server?

• E2db server is software which periodically collects emails containing information entered by your website users/customers.
  
• E2db processes those emails and posts the information submitted by those users to any ADO database (such as Microsoft Access or SQL Server) on your computer or network.
  
• E2db server includes a SPAM filter to prevent emails not originating from your website being processed.
  
• After a record has been posted to your database e2db can trigger an action such as running another application or playing a sound.
  
• E2db runs silently in the background so you can use your computer as normal.
  
• E2db has full progress and error logging so you always know what is going on and information is never lost.

Requirements

Any PC with Windows 95 or better
An Internet connection
Web form which forwards the information submitted to an email address
ADO Database (e.g. Microsoft Access, SQL Server, MySQL)
POP3 email account

How to request an evaluation license

The E2db Server software has two editions, or modes. These are the Personal Edition and the Business Edition. When you first download the software E2db Server is in Personal Edition mode and will allow you to create one project.

To evaluate the Business Edition you must first put the software into "Business Edition" mode before requesting an evaluation license. To do this open E2db Server and close the License screen by clicking the close window "X" icon in the top right of the screen. The "Play" button will be disabled since you do not have a valid license installed yet. Click "Options" in the "Server" menu and change the mode to "Business". Click "OK" and close E2db Server. Reopen E2db and continue as instructed below.

The first time you run E2db you can request an evaluation license from Interkonect by simply clicking on the “click here to request an evaluation license” web link on the License screen.

After clicking on the web link you will be taken to a web page on Interkonect’s website which will ask you for some contact details and an unlock code. The unlock code will automatically be filled out for you.

You should receive your evaluation license by email within 24 hours. The license will be attached to the email.

How to purchase full license

If you wish to purchase a full license for the Business Edition of E2db Server which allows an unlimited number of projects you must first change E2db Server to be in Business Edition mode. To do this simply open E2db Server, choose "Options" from the "Server" menu and select the mode as "Business". You will then be asked to close and reopen E2db.

Purchasing a full license after your evaluation license has expired

When you open E2db Server the License screen will inform you that your license has expired. Click the hyperlink allowing you to "Purchase a full license".

You will be taken to a webpage on Interkonect’s website where you must fill out your contact details, unlock code and payment method. Most of this information will be automatically filled out for you.

Purchasing a full license before your evaluation license has expired

Open E2db Server and choose "About" from the "Help" menu. Click the hyperlink that says "Purchase a full license".

You will be taken to a webpage on Interkonect’s website where you must fill out your contact details, unlock code and payment method. Most of this information will be automatically filled out for you.

Installing a License

You will usually receive your license as an email attachment.

Download the attachment to a folder on your computer e.g. My Documents or the Desktop but not the same folder that E2db is installed in. By default E2db is installed in "C:\ Progam Files\E2db Server\"

Now click the "Install License" button on the License screen. This button is also available from the About screen in the Help menu.

E2db will ask you to select the License file you wish to install. Select the file you have just saved from the email and click "select". Do not select the license file which already exists in the folder which E2db is installed in. By default E2db is installed in "C:\ Progam Files\E2db Server\"

Once E2db has installed the license it will display a message saying so.

E2db will then ask you if you wish to delete the original license file. Click “Yes” and E2db will delete the attachment you downloaded. This is OK as E2db has installed the license so you have no need for a copy. Please note some email software saves attachments as read-only files so the attachment will not be deleted and you will have to delete it yourself.

E2db will then ask you if you wish to close E2db, click “Yes”, as your new license will not take effect until E2db has been re-started.

When you re-start E2db you should see your name (or company name) on the E2db License screen and the OK button should be enabled. Click the OK button to start E2db.

Quick Guide to E2db

E2db Server Personal Edition

Click 'Project Wizard' in the 'Project' menu to open the wizard.

E2db Server Business Edition

Click 'Project Manager' in the 'Projects' menu to open the project manager.
Click 'New' to start a new project and open the project wizard.

The Project Wizard

If you already have a web form created then follow option A, web form first.

If you already have your database created then follow option B, database first.

A) Web form first

If you already have a web form created either by yourself or a web development team then next you must create a table within your database.

The names of the fieldnames in your database table must match the names of the inputs in your web form.

For example if you have three text inputs which allow your user to enter their name, and email address, you (or the web development team) may have named the three inputs: FirstName, LastName and Email respectively.

Here is an example of the HTML code for a web form input:

<input name="FirstName" type="text">

Helpful web link: http://webdesign.about.com/cs/forms/a/aaformstut2.htm

Here is an example of a web page, which has a web form.

Here is the HTML code for the above web form:
All non-form tags (table and paragraph tags) are show in green.

<form name="NewsletterForm" method="post" action="/cgi-sys/mailform">
   <table width="100%" border="0">
     <tr>
       <td width="26%">Firstname</td>
       <td width="74%"><input name="FirstName" type="text"></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
       <td>Lastname</td>
       <td><input name="LastName" type="text"></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
       <td>Email address</td>
       <td><input name="Email" type="text"></td>
     </tr>
   </table>
   <p align="center">
     <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit">
     <input type="hidden" name="subject" value="newsletter">
     <input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="e2db@interkonect.com">
   </p>
   </form>

The form HTML tags are in black, and the formatting HTML tags (Tables and alignment) are in green. The form input names are highlighted in yellow.

In this case you would create a table in your database with three fields called FirstName, LastName and Email. The spellings must be exactly the same. The data type for the fields is your responsibility. In this case if you were using Microsoft Access you would set the data type for the fields to “Text”.

See Appendix 3 for more information on field data types and matching web form input types.

Please note the names of the various data types differ between databases. In our examples we are using Microsoft Access.

If the user entered a number into one of the web form inputs you would set the data type for the corresponding field to “Number”. 

This is an example of what your database might look like:

Note: It is good practice to include a field that uniquely identifies each record in the table. This is the reason for the PersonID field, which has its data type set to AutoNumber. This data type ensures a unique incremental number is generated automatically for each record posted to the database.

B) Database first

If you already have a table within a database created by you or a database development team then you must create a web form next.

The names of the web form input fields must match the names of the fieldnames in your table.

For example if you have a table called Newsletter with three fields to store people's name and email address, you (or the database development team) may have named the three fieldnames: FirstName, LastName and Email respectively. The data type for each field would be “Text”.

See appendix 3 for more information about field data types and matching web form input types.

Please note the names of the various data types differ between databases. In our examples we are using Microsoft Access.

Here is an example:

The Database Table in design mode.

The Database Table in data entry mode.

In this case you would create a web form on your webpage with three inputs called FirstName, LastName and Email. The spellings must be exactly the same as fieldnames in your table. The type of input is your responsibility. In this case you would use “Text” inputs.

What about asking your user for numbers, there is no number input type?

You can use a text input to capture numbers, decimal numbers, dates, times, and currency values. E2db will automatically convert the information entered by the web form user to the correct format required by your database.

For more information about capturing numbers, dates, yes/no and other non-text types of information see Appendix 3.

This is what your web form might look like:

Here is the HTML code for the above web form:
All non-form tags (table and parargraph tags) are shown in green.

<form name="NewsletterForm" method="post" action="/cgi-sys/mailform">
<table width="100%" border="0">
  <tr>
    <td width="26%">Firstname</td>
    <td width="74%"><input name="FirstName" type="text"></td>  
</tr>  
<tr>
    <td>Lastname</td>   
  <td><input name="LastName" type="text"></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>  
   <td>Email address</td>    
<td><input name="Email" type="text"></td>  
</tr>
</table>
<p align="center">
<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit">
<input type="hidden" name="subject" value="newsletter">  
<input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="e2db@interkonect.com">
</p>
</form>

The form HTML tags are in black, and the formatting HTML tags (tables and alignment) are in green. The form input names are highlighted in yellow.

E2db Settings

Now you have your web form and database you must enter the settings into E2db.

Open E2db and click OK to close the License screen.

Click Settings in the Project menu.

Anytime you click on settings it will automatically pause the server if it is running.

There are five tabs in the Settings screen these are: Project, Email accounts, Rules, Web form profile and Database.

We are going to examine each of these tabs and their settings next.

The Project tab

Email accounts tab

There are two email accounts that E2db uses. These are a POP3 and SMTP accounts. POP3 email accounts are used to receive email and SMTP accounts are used to send email. They usually come in a pair. The POP3 account should relate to the email address which your form2mail scripts send generated emails to.

Consult your website development team if you do not have these details. The SMTP account details are optional, but highly recommended because you may lose information if E2db can’t forward emails that can’t be processed.

It is recommended that you set up a dedicated POP3 account for E2db to use.

You can press the Test buttons under the POP3 and SMTP account settings to confirm that E2db can access the accounts.

If E2db reports that it can’t connect to either of the accounts it may be because you are not connected to the Internet, or you have firewall software/hardware blocking E2db accessing the Internet, or the settings are incorrect.

Rules tab

This tab defines the rules that E2db uses to determine if email is SPAM and what to do with SPAM and emails that can’t be processed.

Web form profile tab

For the time being we will skip this tab and come to it in the next section.

Database tab

Here you enter the details of your database, how to connect to it and the table which the information within the emails should be posted to. If you do not know the connection string to connect to your database consult your database development team.

You can also set optional actions to be performed after a record or number of records have been successfully posted to the table.

Press the Test button to check the connection string you have entered allows E2db to connect to the database. When you press the Test button the Table setting is automatically populated with all the tables in the database if the connection string is valid.

If you are having trouble with the connection string please refer to the troubleshooting section for more information and example connection strings for popular ADO databases.

Now press the OK button to save your settings.

E2db will ask you if you want to re-start the server (it was paused if running when you opened the settings screen). Click “No” for the time being as we haven’t finished entering the settings.

Web form profile tab

These settings allow us to process an email generated by any form2mail script written in any scripting language.

First of all we need an example of an email generated by your form2mail script. So open the webpage containing your web form in a web browser and enter some test information.

Now we need to see the email created by you entering some test information. You can do this one of two ways:

1. By using a regular email client

Now using a regular email software (e.g. Microsoft Outlook) receive the email generated. You will need to set the email software to receive the email generated by your form2mail script using the same POP3 account details that you entered into E2db.

Make sure you deactivate, remove the POP3 settings from, or close, your email software to prevent it receiving the emails generated by your form2mail script instead of E2db once you have received your test email.

2. Using Format Spy (built in to E2db server)

Click the 'Format Spy' button to open Format Spy. Then press the Start button to begin looking for emails sent to the POP3 email account. For each email E2db finds it will display the email and ask "Is this the email from your web form?", if it is, press Yes and the Format Spy will stop looking for any more emails. Press No to go on to the next email or continue waiting for the email to arrive.

The format spy does not delete any emails.

Once the email has arrived we need to look at the email and enter our observations into E2db.

For example the email may look like this:

[FirstName]=”Kris”
[LastName]=”Leech”
[Email]=”kris@email.com”
[Submit]=”Submit”

You may be wondering where the Submit entry is from. It is a by-product of the form2mail script and will generate a minor warning in the E2db log, which can be ignored. This does not occur with all form2mail scripts.

Anyway back to the settings; firstly look for the characters that surround the fieldname/input name and the characters that surround the test information entered by you.

The characters surrounding the fieldname/input name make up the fieldname start and end characters. These two characters are sometimes different, and sometimes the same depending on the form2mail script used. In the above case the Fieldname start character is [ and the fieldname end character is ].

The characters surrounding the values entered by you make up the value start and value end characters. These are usually the same but may be different. In the above case both the value start and value end characters are quote marks, “.

For more examples of web form profiles see Appendix 1. E2db also has a series of pre-set web form profiles.

E2db Server can have as many web form profiles as you like. Each project is assosiated with one web form profile.

You cannot change the web form profile setting directly from the Project wizard. You must open the Profile Editor by pressing the 'Profile Editor' button.

Profile Editor Settings

Press the 'Save' button to save your changes. You will see your changes reflected in the Project wizard.

Now you can press 'Finish' to save your project. E2db will ask you if you wish to re-start the server. Press "Yes" to start E2db.

Every time E2db is started it checks the first project for new email and after the number of seconds set as the interval, in Options, E2db will move on to the next project and check the new email until it gets back to the first project again (Business Edition Only).

Any email it finds is checked to see if it is SPAM. If it is SPAM it is either forwarded to the email address you set or deleted.

Next the email is processed and the information posted to the database of your choice.

All actions and errors are logged in a log file named by today’s date. They are also displayed in E2db’s main screen. When midnight passes a new log file is created for that day. 

E2db options

Choose 'Options' from the Server menu.

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Part 1 Setting up E2db Server ¦ Part 2 Further E2db Server ¦ Part 3 Troubleshooting and Appendices

E2db Server COPYRIGHT 2004 Interkonect Services UK Ltd. All rights reserved.