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0 pointslokedhs5y ago0 comments

I did exactly this in 1996 when we implemented a case management system with a web-based frontend. It used a home-grown webserver written in Perl that was talking SQL to a Sybase instance.

And it was definitely not something unique. This project started because I was asking (probably on Usenet) for advice on what GUI framework we should use, and was recommended to build the application using web technologies.

The fact that IBM managed to get a patent on this is just one more of an almost infinite number of examples showing why the patent system is broken.

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pnw_hazor5y ago

Did you use an intermediate macro language and a per application macro file that mapped fields from the HTML to SQL on per request basis?

(This patent does not claim presenting SQL result in HTML -- it claims a particular way of mapping between the POST HTML and DB2 SQL using a customized macro language -- referred to as a common namespace in claim 1)

goatinaboat5y ago

Perl that was talking SQL to a Sybase instance

I remember Sybperl, since everyone was using Perl for CGI in the 90’s anyway it was a no-brainer to use it for that. Sybperl was released in 1990!

Bubbadoo5y ago

Yes, and after sybperl, DBD::Sybase/DBI became all the rage in the late 90s. The IBM patent is obsceleted at this point, though I still try to see how many lines of code I need to do same thing with perl/sybperl/dbi on other platforms using other languages such scala/mysql.

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