Separating Data Access from Data Formatting

You can use RSSBus Simple Services to remove the data access function from the data formatting function. This can provide a number of configuration, security and reuse benefits. Here is a template that calls an RSSBus Simple Service to access a Microsoft Access database. The template accepts a personalization input that will be used to select records from a table:

<rsb:info>
    <input name="manufacturer" default="" />
</rsb:info> 

<table>
<tr><th>Model #</th><th>Manufacturer</th></tr>
<rsb:call op="sp://myserver/Shared%20Documents/toners2.rsb?man=[manufacturer]">
    <tr><td>[toner:modelnumber]</td><td>[toner:manufacturer]</td></tr>
</rsb:call>

</table>

Below is the toners2.rsb service definition called by the above template. RSSBus Simple Service scripts are very similar to templates, but they have an rsb:push statement instead of embedded HTML. Each execution of the push statement within the call loop sends one row of data to the output feed. Note the rsb:map statement that renames the output columns from the access: namespace (the default for accessSelect) to the toner: namespace. This further hides the source of the data from callers.

<rsb:info title="Toners Access Service">
    <input name="manufacturer" default=""/>
</rsb:info>

<rsb:set attr="database" value="demo.mdb" />
<rsb:set attr="table"    value="Toners" />

<!-- Match manufacturer if value was supplied, else return all -->
<rsb:notequals attr="manufacturer" value="">
    <rsb:set attr="rec:manufacturer" value="[manufacturer]" />
</rsb:notequals> 

<rsb:call op="accessSelect" output="out">
    <rsb:map from="out" to="newout" map="toner:* = access:*"/>

    <rsb:push item="newout">
        [ newout.* ]
    </rsb:push>

</rsb:call>