[gwicke]

Does anyone have a slick way of giving my inexperienced (actually all) users a way to execute UNIX scripts from their desktop Windows PC's?

Ideally I would like to be able to create an desktop icon that would hide all the connection 'stuff' and just execute the script.

The output from the script is simply an e-mail message back to a list of people or in many cases there is no output but data is manipulated in the process.

Would I have to use something like VB or can Perl operate in Windows? Most users are either Win2000 or W98.

Thanks very much for the help.

Gary

[codejockey]

Interesting idea -- I take it you have in mind completely hiding any details of the job from the user (so telnet, for example, is really not an option). You certainly could use perl for the job (perl is available for Windoze). There are other options as well, depending on whether you want to write custom software or not. Additional info appreciated.

Hope this helps.

[gwicke]

Thanks very much for the quick response. Yes, I would like to hide all coding, logins, passwords, IP addresses, etc. form the user if possible. I don't mind doing some coding but just didn't want to re-invent the wheel.

I haven't used Perl before. Can Perl program units (scripts?) be developed and presented to a user as a desktop icon and still hide the guts behind it?

Are the O'Reilly books good ones for Perl or do you have others that you like better?

The clients are running either Win2000 or W98 and communicate to the backend Oracle database via Net8 or ODBC. The scripts that will ultimately get run on the UNIX (Oracle) server are SQL and PL/SQL.

Thanks again and I look forward to your additional ideas.

Gary