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22 Oct 2000, Ireland:

Dear Dr. Ecommerce:

I am on the Board of Directors of a medium size Credit Union serving 4,500 members. I am using my homepage as our web page and I now want to expand the service to our customers by allowing them to see their balance over the net. My idea is to give everyone a PIN number (four digit) and to upload the final balances in a database at the end of each working day. My questions are as follows:

Where can I get information on providing a secure link? Can I set up a secure link on my own homepage which is hosted on an ISP? Where can I find information on the type of database file I need to provide. I think this database is called ODBC?

I would like to keep the project as simple as possible so that it can remain under the control of our Voluntary (non-professional) Board of Directors.

Thank you

Des

Dear Des:

The best person to ask this question is not me, but ISP that hosts your web site. Most web hosting companies offer secure solutions and password protected pages. Your web host should also be able to fill you in on what kind of database tools and scripting they support. Ideally, they will be able to recommend specific products that they are familiar with and which are well suited to their system. If not, it may be time to find a web hosting service with a better attitude towards customer service!

In the meantime, I think a great place for product reviews, downloads and the like is www.zdnet.com. Enter "ODBC" into the search field and you'll get a lot of information to explore.

Good luck,

Dr. Ecommerce