The DCSCOMPT Intranet consists of several thousand pages which convey a wide variety of information ranging from policy guidance to records of meetings to analyses to various forms of access to data. The central pages of the Intranet reside on an Intranet server (IIS4) which I access using Frontpage, but the bulk of the pages reside on a virtual directory elsewhere on the LAN which I and others can access by mapping to that drive.

I do not have direct access to the Intranet server. I use Frontpage to communicate with a development server, but I do not use Frontpage to build web pages. I use note pad. I use HTML, Javascript, VBScript, Java applets and Cascading Style Sheets technology. My use of Java has been limited to pre-built applets, but in addition to letting me add a bit of flash to my menus, it has enabled me to add a news scroller which can be updated on the virtual directory. Javascript and VBScript are used for a variety of tasks, ranging from simple dating of pages to report formatting on ASP pages. My use of CSS has not taken full advantage of the technology, but has been limited to taking advantage of the consistent syntax for applying styles to text and experimentation with alternative menuing approaches.

Content is the driving motivation for the Intranet and pages are built using whatever technology seems most appropriate. Some pages are built from MS Office documents using the built in HTML generation while others are included as MS Office documents.

Several years ago, I wanted to add access to some of our database data, so I wrote a program in CA-Clipper to create static web pages which permit a certain degree of "drill-down" from summary level to detail.

More recently, I found that analysts were using a report which they received in text format. I wrote a program in Ada to remove irrelevant data and format a web page which highlights problem areas in red. I have also written an Ada program to help document Clipper programs on the Intranet (see above).

Using Active Server Pages allowed me to expand access to our data even further. Using a combination of ASP, ADO and Access 97, I was able to create pages that allowed users to create their own query by selecting from drop-down lists. This enabled us to provide data more quickly and with fewer people having to touch it.

ASP is also useful for creating self-updating menu pages without allowing direct directory browsing. This page provides access to PowerPoint presentations from a recent conference. Presentations can be added or deleted without having to change the menu page. It takes advantage of the FileSystemObject and NT’s long file and directory name capability.