Features and Benefits
SA-FileUp™ allows users with a web browser to upload or transmit
files from their local hard disk to a Microsoft Internet Information Server
(IIS) web server. Files can be of any format, such as Word documents, images
or plain text. Files up to 2 GB in size can be transmitted.
Developers can use SA-FileUp to receive and process user input, while
staying within the context of their Active Server application.
Key Features:
- Server-side component requires no software be installed on user's PC
- Fully scriptable by Active Server Pages (ASP)
- Compliant with HTML 3.2 and Internet standard RFC 1867
- Works with Netscape 2.x and above browsers
- Works with the following versions of Internet Explorer
Requirements:
- Windows NT 4.0 - Windows '95 Coming Soon!
- Internet Information Server V3.0 or V4.0 including:
- IIS for NT Server
- Peer Web Server for NT Workstation
- Personal Web Server for Windows '95 - Coming Soon!
- Active Server Pages (version 1.15.14.0 or later).
- Intel x86 or Alpha processor.
- For IIS 3 users, it is recommended but not essential that Service Pack
3 and the ASP Hotfix (KB article Q165335) be installed.
Pricing:
- $49 US per server.
- Source code and site licensing are available. Please contact Software
Artisans, Inc directly for further information.
- Please check The Software Artisans'
web site for the latest ordering information.
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Quick Installation or Upgrade
For complete instructions about installing SA-FileUp, including tailoring
your installation and security considerations, please see the complete documentation.
Installation of SA-FileUp consists of simply running the setup.exe
file included with this distribution.
SA-FileUp works well with IIS Version 4 and the NT Option Pack.
For IIS Version 3 users, please note that you will need Version
1.0b or later of Active Server for this release of SA-FileUp. The
latest version of IIS can be downloaded from Microsoft's
IIS Web Site (http://www.microsoft.com/iis). To determine your current
version of Active Server:
- Open Windows Explorer
- Navigate to \winnt\system32\inetsrv\asp. (Replace \winnt by your system
root)
- Right-click on ASP.DLL, and select Properties
- Choose the Version tab. It should read 1.15.14.0 (or later).
SA-FileUp will not work with an earlier version of Active Server.
If you have installed a previous version of SA-FileUp, it will be necessary
to stop and re-start IIS's WWW Publishing Service. If you are installing
SA-FileUp for the first time, it is not necessary to re-start the WWW server.
You are now ready to upload files.
Upgrading from the Evaluation Version
If you've previously used the evaluation version of SA-FileUp and are
now upgrading to the full release:
- Before install the complete, non-evaluation version, be sure to uninstall
the evaluation version. This will remove all directories and program files.
Use either the shortcut from the "SoftArtisans SA-FileUp 2.0 Eval"
start menu, or use the Control Panel's "Add/Remove Programs"
application
- If SA-FileUp has already been loaded by IIS, you will be prompted by
the installation procedure to reboot your server.
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How Does SA-FileUp Compare?
SA-FileUp compares very well to other alternative means of file upload
and download. During your evaluation you should be aware of the following
benefits of SA-FileUp as compared to:
How does SA-FileUp compare to the
Posting Acceptor?
Here are objective comparisons between SA-FileUp and Microsoft's Posting
Acceptor (PA):
- ASP Integration: SA-FileUp is fully scriptable
by Active Server Pages. Rather than existing as a separate ISAPI DLL, SA-FileUp
integrates very smoothly with your ASP application.
- Standards support: PA Upload from IE browsers
uses the proprietary WebPost API, rather than the standard RFC 1867, so
by default you need different forms for Netscape and IE users.
- Anonymous Connections: Since PA uses an ISAPI
DLL, it must provide additional security protection outside of your ASP
application. For this reason, PA disallows all anonymous connections.
Since SA-FileUp is integrated with ASP, your application can decide the
appropriate level of security, including anonymous.
- Control of the Upload: PA does not allow any control
of the upload as it being sent. With SA-FileUp, you limit the size of the
upload, or decide at run-time to flush the upload. Best of all, you can
change the location of the upload dynamically.
- Processing: PA has a two-step upload and repost processing.
With SA-FileUp, everything can be accomplished in a single step, such as
writing to a database depending on the status of the upload.
- Uploading to a Database: PA can only upload to files.
SA-FileUp can upload to files as well as databases.
- "Spaces in filenames": PA has a known issue
when processing filenames that contains spaces. SA-FileUp has no such restriction.
- Price: PA is bundled with
NT Option Pack and free for download from Microsoft. SA-FileUp is $49 per
server. Site licensing and source code are available for SA-FileUp.
How does SA-FileUp compare to FTP-based
upload mechanisms?
SA-FileUp offers numerous advantages over FTP-based upload mechanisms.
- Authentication: With FTP uploads you must either manage
many user accounts or allow anonymous access. With uploads via a web application,
the application can determine who is allowed to upload, without a large
administrative burden.
- Security: Uploads using SA-FileUp can be SSL encoded
so that the information is encrypted during transmission. There is no means
for doing that using standard FTP.
- Ease of configuration: FTP uploads require the administrator
to fine tune NTFS permissions. With SA-FileUp, this is determined by the
application as well as by the adminstrator, if desired.
- Flexibility: Want to save DOC files in one location and
graphics in another? With FTP, your users have to know that. With SA-FileUp,
you can enforce these policies in your application and change them without
disrupting your users.
- Power: With SA-FileUp, you can limit the size of the
uploaded file dynamically every time it is invoked. You could even change
the size depending on information contained in the same form. Additionally,
you can flush uploads that do match certain criteria, such as wrong MIME
type or file contents.
- Simplicity and friendliness: A pleasing web page can
offer instructions, advise, on-line help. This is not possible with batch
based FTP. More importantly, when errors occur, you can provide immediate
feedback to the user and offer corrective action.
- Firewall support: Many organizations do not allow out-bound
FTP for security and intellectual property reasons. Since SA-FileUp uses
HTTP uploads, information can be transferred using HTTP Port 80 and will
work with all modern firewalls and proxy servers.
- Supplemental Information: SA-FileUp renders accessible
additional information about the upload, such as the user's original filename.
This can be very useful in intranet scenarios.
- Upload to a database: SA-FileUp allows you to upload
to an OLE DB database. Try that with FTP!
How does SA-FileUp compare to CGI-based
upload mechanisms?
SA-FileUp offers several important advantages over CGI-based upload mechanisms:
- Performance: SA-FileUp executes as an in-proc DLL, which
means it is much faster than CGI for all size files. CGI has an expensive
startup time for small files as there is a new process created for every
upload. Several concurrent uploads would kill a web server. For large files,
all of the upload data must be passed across process boundaries effectively
copying the data twice. This adds tremendous costs to uploads. CGI is simply
not a scalable alternative.
- Security: SA-FileUp operates in the correct security
context provided by IIS/ASP. This allows for NT domain users to be authenticated
and impersonated during an upload. Even though the upload is occurring
through a browser, the security credentials are exactly those of the sending
user (assuming authentication and not anonymous access) is in use.
- Integration with ASP: SA-FileUp is fully integrated with
Active Server Pages, permitting easy programmability.
- Uploading to a database: Many CGI based solutions do
not permit the flexibility to upload to a database.
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Release Notes
SA-FileUp has numerous new features and functions.
What's New for Version 2:
- Multiple form and files elements in a single upload
- Uploaded file can be stored in a database BLOB(binary field)
- Secure File download component from a file or database BLOB
- Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 4.0
- Support for Microsoft Internet Information Server Version 4.0
- Many new Methods and Properties
- Tons of new code samples
- The documentation has increased ten-fold
Known Problem:
- At this point, there is only one known problem. If you define a form
field with <INPUT NAME="FILENAME"> SA-FileUp will crash.
Use any name for the field name besides 'filename'.
Suggestions include 'f1', 'file1', etc.
- When viewing the on-line documentation, some users have been unable
to view the Java-based navigation applet when using a combination of Internet
Explorer (IE) 4 and Internet Information Server (IIS) 4. This problem does
not occur with IIS Version 3. Please see our web site for any updates to
the documentation that address this problem.
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Differences Between V1 and V2
There are several differences between this release and Version 1 or earlier
betas of Version 2. For most of your applications, the impact should be
minimal. Even though we have added many features, we have worked hard to
maintain compatibility with the previous version, with the following exceptions:
- File Caching and Permissions:
- By processing multiple form elements, it is necessary to cache files
on the web server's disk before the ASP script can issue the .SaveAs method.
By default, SA-FileUp will cache these files in the system temporary directory,
typically "C:\TEMP". If you want to improve performance, as well
as avoiding writing into this directory, use the new .Path property
to define the location of the cached files.
- The File Download Component:
- Previously, there was a separate object called "SoftArtisans.FileDown"
for performing file downloads. This is no longer necessary. All file download
functions are now available as methods of the principal SoftArtisans.FileUp
object. Any references to Server.CreateObject("SoftArtisans.FileDown")
should be changed to Server.CreateObject("SoftArtisans.FileUp").
- The Transfer method has been renamed TransferFile to be more coherent
with the TransferBlob method.
In summary, if you are using:
set download = Server.CreateObject("SoftArtisans.FileDown")
download.transfer "c:\mydir\myfile.ext" change this to:
set download = Server.CreateObject("SoftArtisans.FileUp")
download.transferfile "c:\mydir\myfile.ext"
- The File Upload Component:
- The SaveBinaryAs previously allowed access to the file information
if there was any (i.e. ContentDisposition, ContentType, etc.). Now when
performing a SaveBinaryAs, this information is no longer available.
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All Documentation
The documentation has been greatly enhanced. It requires Java support
in your browser to view table of contents in the left frame.
Note: When viewing
the on-line documentation, some users have been unable to view the Java-based
navigation applet when using a combination of Internet Explorer (IE) 4
and Internet Information Server (IIS) 4. This problem does not occur with
IIS Version 3. Please see our web site for any updates to the documentation
that address this problem.
Installation of the documentation is automatic with Internet Information
Server (IIS) Version 3 and Version 4. When installing for use with IIS Version
4, you can also use the setup wizard of the Microsoft Management Console
(MMC).
To install the SA-FileUp documentation using MMC:
- Right click on the "Default Web Site."
- Select New->Virtual Directory to start the Virtual Directory Wizard.
- As the alias enter "SAFileUpDocs" (without quotation marks)
- For the physical path, use the "Browse.." button and select
C:\Program Files\Software Artisans\SA-FileUp\Documentation".
- Accept the defaults and click on the "Finish" button.
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Sample Code
There are numerous code samples covering all aspects of SA-FileUp including
upload to a file, upload to a database, download from a file and download
from a database. We are constantly enlarging our code sample base: please
let us know if we can add other samples.
Installation of the sample code is automatic with Internet Information
Server (IIS) Version 3 and Version 4. When installing for use with IIS Version
4, you can also use the setup wizard of the Microsoft Management Console
(MMC).
To install the Code Samples:
- Right click on the "Default Web Site."
- Select New->Virtual Directory to start the Virtual Directory Wizard.
- As the alias enter "SAFileUpSamples" (without quotation marks)
- For the physical path, use the "Browse.." button and select
C:\Program Files\Software Artisans\SA-FileUp\Samples".
- Accept the defaults and click on the "Finish" button.
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Copyright ©
1997, Software Artisans, Inc.