The UC Davis Herbarium uses Active Server Pages (Microsoft Technology) to allow Internet/Web users to query the herbarium database (a Microsoft Access database). We have modified these Active Server Pages into a generic format (Click here to view the UC Davis Herbarium's website from which these templates are based on) so that anyone who has downloaded and used the UC Davis Herbarium Database Management System can make use of these web scripts to serve over the Internet.

These Web scripts can service any versions of the database system.
As these are updated,  we will make available the new scripts and post them here.

We make these Active Server Pages freely available for any public or academic institution to use; However we cannot take any responsibilities regarding their use.

To make use of these, follow these steps:

1) Check that the Herbarium Database Management System software is in its original structure as downloaded from our server.  As all these scripts require the database to have this structure. If you have added to the database structure, that is okay, unless you have modified the original relationships and/or object definitions; These will work with the updated version 4.

     [Click here to download the Herbarium Database Management System]

2)  Click here to download the zipped (compressed) Active Server Pages

3) The Web server which will host these Active Server Page files must first be setup. A vitual web with appropriate script execute rights must be established for the folder in which you place these scripts. Seek the assistance of a network or web administrator to complete this procedure if you do not have experience and/or administrative privileges. We have only used and tested these scripts on a Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000 based server running IIS (these also work under the new .NET environment, although does not make use of any of the .NET features).

4) We suggest using a copy of the Herbarium Database (LabelsData.mdb or LabelsData2000.mdb, whichever version you are using) over using your production database, to serve the scripted webpages on your Web server.

5) Establish an ODBC reference source to the herbarium database (LabelsData.mdb or LabelsData2000.mdb), and give it the System DSN name "Herblabel". Select the "Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)" as the driver for the data source. If you need assistance with these procedures, it is best to contact your network/web administrator.

5) Copy (uncompress) the Active Server Script files to the website folder you created. The scripts use relative paths, thus should work from any website folder you establish.

6) The homepage should point to the "index.html" web file.

7) You can change any of the generic text within any of the pages to add your selected institutional text and/or images/logo. However, modify the Visual Basic (ASP) scripts at your risk, as we will not be able to assist in most cases if errors occur.

We hope that these Active Server Page scripts will server as a good starting point for those desiring to publish the database to the Web/Internet. (We have created a generic script using PHP, however these open source options are incomplete and we currently do not make use of them).

We welcome any feedback.

Contact: herbarium@ucdavis.edu for additional information and/or to return feedback.

Click here to return to Herbarium Management System  |  Click here to return to UC Davis herbarium homepage