Requirements for turning CUTE on

Soft ones:

A not very old Win32 kinda operating system, or any computer with a web server you know how to run classic ASP (Active Server Pages) with. Tested in Windows XP Professional (IIS 5.1) and Windows Vista Home Premium (IIS 7). Not tested in SunOS, ChilliSoft.

Heavy ones:

IIS version 5 or later with its correspondent ASP engine and support for VBScript language.
ADO (ActiveX Data Objects).
DAO (Data Access Objects, needed for the MS Access database creation feature).

To check for this requirements:

ISS 5+ comes in any windows server technology since 2000, more or less... and in some home operating systems labeled as not the most basic version or "home" version, that is, workstation versions, professional versions, home premium versions, etc... This includes ASP and VBScript engines.

Windows Vista:: activate your server's classic ASP compatibility.
Windows OS:: open regedit and search for "DAO.DBEngine.36" (DAO ProgId), if OK all's OK (with the exception of a possibly corrupt DAO installation, which sadly is not so uncommon as it should). You can further customize DAO ProgId in preferences file.

CUTE goes on more or less in a Windows 98 with its included PWS (Personal Web Server). The only brainstorming thing may be installing Microsoft DAO 3.6 to be able to create databases, because DAO 3.5 driver permissions may be problematic within Windows 98, or its moustache.

Explicit notes for Windows 98 (where 98 refers to 1998) users:

Better use up to CUTE v4.2. Due to changes in code to allow i18n, unicode, utf-8 and so for, versions starting in 4.3 are rather slow (in win98) compared to 4.2 and previous ones. But if you need the international features, well, then you might know that:
There is a preference file customized for win98, called, of course: basic (win98 adjusted) cute_preferences.ida. Avoid not to use it.

Only for empathy: I returned to use the basic good old days class terminate with a lot of things commented only for you, 98ers:

    Private Sub Class_Terminate()
        Redim m_PrimaryKeyFields(0)
        Redim m_StandardFields(0)
        ' commented because class "garbage collection" seems to hang win98 PWS (Personal Web Server):
        'if IsObject(m_RS) then
        '    m_RS.Close
            Set m_RS = Nothing
        'end if
        'if IsObject(m_RSForm) then
        '    m_RSForm.Close
            Set m_RSForm = Nothing
        'end if
        'if IsObject(m_DB) then
        '    m_DB.Close
            Set m_DB = Nothing
        'end if
    End Sub

Basic installation instructions

To setup CUTE, please copy the contents of the distribution (including all subdirectories) to a folder of your choice, and make a Virtual Directory in your IIS that points to it, or simply copy all the contents directly to a new folder you'll give up with name CUTE and that will be inside c:\inetpub\wwwroot folder.

Launch file index.asp with a browser like Firefox, Explorer, Opera or the way and... insert the "early development" user name:

 guest

...and you're in.

NOTE: CUTE uses session variables, so for reasons of session variable encapsulation, CUTE should have a virtual folder on its own, specially if it lives with other applications or web pages that use session variables in the same server. This is done via IIS console, where for a given folder you can specify name, permissions, etc. for the application that folder has migrated to.

There are three ways to specify how connect UTE to a database, two of them polite, one of them quite really cute:

polite 1: Via ODBC, using a so called DSN connection.
polite 2: Via OLEDB Provider, this means directly to the file, a so called DSN-less connection.
cutest (and preferred): when you say: I've got a lot of MDB files of Microsoft Access in a given folder and I want to manage all of 'em... making tables, altering tables, even making new databases....

Simply edit the file cute_preferences.ida to specify your database locations, paths to real mdb files and/or folders with mdb files or DSN's.

Security consideration: old cute_preferences.nfo file has changed to cute_preferences.ida, this is because ida is an extension interpreted internally by IIS, and so is virtually impossible obtain an undesired read of preferences file via website, even if the extension is not explicitly forbidden via IIS website configuration. Still, if you want to continue with the older extension, anyway a reason could exist, change this in file preference_file_location.inc:

  Const CUTE_PREF_FILE = "cute_preferences.ida"

to:

  Const CUTE_PREF_FILE = "cute_preferences.nfo"

You can protect additionally the preferences file from outside "spies" denying its read access in IIS configuration manager, and unchecking the anonymous access option in file security options.

Default, CUTE comes with a demo database connection, test.mdb. You can add more MDB databases or remove existing ones editing cute_preferences.ida file. You can add folders too, and CUTE searches for MDB databases in them, which ones are found are automatically added to workspace.

License and so for...

CUTE is open source (GPL v.2 or later, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html or the distro folder for license details), and is maintained and everythinged neatly really in:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cuteasp

Conventional website and additional info in:

http://cuteasp.sourceforge.net
http://www.iamnotgoogle.com

CUTE is based in the excellent UTE, made by Tom Wellige (tom@wellige.com, http://www.wellige.com).

With CUTE, I'm only trying to adapt UTE to particular MDB databases management functions, similarly to what Microsoft Access does, but "a little" :-) less.

Bugs (known prefix is implicit)

See document BUGS & TODOs.txt

CUTE (cooled UTE)

a free, web based editor for Access and SQL Server databases