Next, we create a data access page using the Page wizard which brings the screen shown in Figure 18.  You can choose to display the fields (columns) you want by clicking on the single arrow [>] to transfer the columns you desire one-by-one, or use double arrows [>>] to transfer all available fields to the right pane.  This is a standard selection UI in Microsoft Products.

Figure 18

When you click on the Next> button in Figure 18 you will see the next window of Page Wizard shown in Figure 19 where you add the grouping levels on the fields.  As you can see, the Country_Name is the first grouping level followed by the sub-level City under it.

Figure 19

Clicking on the button Next> takes you to the window Grouping Intervals in Figure 20 where you may want to choose some grouping interval for the group-level fields.  For example, if you were to choose 1st Letter for the Country_Name field, your display will show only the first letter for the Country Name.  For this choice, both Canada and China will show up under the letter "C."

Figure 20

When you click on the button OK you will be taken to the next window of Page Wizard shown in Figure 21.  You will need to choose the sorting of the records.  Again, this is another standard UI for sorting.  In the screen shot shown in Figure 21, the Last_Name is chosen to be sorted in the ascending order.

Figure 21

Clicking on the button Next> takes you to the Page Wizard window shown in Figure 22 where you provide a name for the data access page's title.  Here you have the option of either opening the page as is or modifying the page's design with or without applying a theme.  If needed, you display Help on working with this page.  Here the option shown in Figure 21 is chosen.

Figure 22

When you click on the Finish button in the window shown in Figure 22, the Data Access Page will open in design view as shown in Figure 23 with default, Page 1: Data Access Page.  The grouping you chose has been faithfully represented in the design showing that the wizard did a good job of implementing the information you provided to the wizard.

Figure 23

For previewing the Data Access Page, it needs to be saved.  You may save from the menu item File by choosing the Save As drop-down menu.  This brings up the window Save As shown in Figure 24.  By default the page gets saved to the My Documents folder in Windows XP Professional.  However, you need to provide a name.  Here it is named OrcEmp.

Figure 24

When you click on the button OK in the screen shown in Figure 24, the Save As Data Access Page window will show up with My Documents in default for the Save in: field.

Figure 25

Since this page is going to be hosted on the intranet site, the C:\Inepub\wwwroot folder was chosen as the directory for the saved data access page, OrcEmp.htm.  This brings up the MS Access message shown in Figure 26.  If the button Yes is clicked, the root directory will become the default for all Data Access Pages.  In this tutorial the option No was chosen.

Figure 26

This saves the file to the root directory.  The orcEmp.htm finds itself in the default website as shown in Figure 27.  This file may now be browsed from the intranet website, which in the present case is the localhost.

Figure 27

However, when you try to browse the data access page you may get the following two warnings. Click on the button OK on both the windows shown in Figure 28 and Figure 29.  The first one deals with the security regarding the data source and the second deals with access permissions.

Figure 28

Figure 29

When you click on the button OK in Figure 29, you will meet with the Oracle login page once again.  You use the same credentials used earlier.

Figure 30

Since you are authenticated, you will see the Data Access Page OrcEmp.htm displayed on your browser at the address http://localhost/OrcEmp.htm.  The grouping levels have been fully expanded.  Using the [-] sign they can be collapsed.

Figure 31

 

The data access page is connected to the data through the field list associated with it, shown in Figure 32.  By highlighting and right-clicking each of the fields (columns), their properties can be accessed.  Changes to the display format of the data access page can be accessed by clicking on the controls in the design view of the page, shown in Figure 33.

Figure 32

In Figure 33, Country_Name was highlighted and the various properties one could access are shown in the drop-down list.  Page, Group_level, section and element properties can be managed by the dialogs that ensue when any of these options are chosen.  It is also possible to call up the Microsoft Script Editor, which can be used for dynamic interaction with the page through the DHTML script support using the client objects and scripts.

Figure 33

Figure 34 shows some cosmetic changes applied to the screen (shown in Figure 31) by accessing the Data Access Page's properties.  The page's heading has been modified, as well as some of the properties of the other fields.  While Data Access Pages can be modified at design time, as described above, properties at run time can be modified using the scripting support provided by the Microsoft Script Editor and the Visual Basic Editor built into the data access page (see Reference link 2 in summary).

Figure 34