About the Authors

DAVIS CHAPMAN first began programming computers while working on his master’s degree in music composition. Writing applications for computer music, he discovered that he enjoyed designing and developing computer software. It wasn’t long before he came to the realization that he stood a much better chance of eating if he stuck with his new-found skill and demoted his hard-earned status as a “starving artist” to a part-time hobby. Since that time, Davis has focused on the art of software design and development, with a strong emphasis on the practical application of client/server technology. Davis

is the lead author of Web Development with Visual Basic 5 and Building Internet Applications with Delphi 2. Davis is also a contributing author of Special Edition Using Active Server Pages and Running a Perfect Web Site, Second Edition. He has been a consultant working and living in Dallas, Texas, for the past eight years, and he can be reached at davischa@onramp.net.

Contributing Author

JON BATES has worked on a whole range of commercial, industrial, and military software development projects worldwide over the past fifteen years. He is currently working

as a self-employed software design consultant and contract software developer, specializing in Visual C++ application development for Windows NT/95/98.

Jon began his career writing computer games for popular microcomputers and has since worked with a number of operating systems, such as CPM, DOS, TRIPOS, UNIX, and Windows, and a number of Assembly, third-generation, and object-oriented languages.

He has written system and application software as diverse as device drivers, email, production modeling, motion video, image analysis, network and telecommunications, data capture, control systems, estimating and costing, and visualization software. He has also written a number of technical articles for computing journals on a range of topics.

Jon lives with his wife, Ruth, and dog, Chaos, in the middle of cool Britannia. When not playing with computers, he likes to sleep and dream of fractals.

You can reach Jon at jon@chaos1.demon.co.uk and visit his Web site at

www.chaos1.demon.co.uk.

Dedication

To Dore, and the rest of my family, for being very patient with me while I was busy writing yet another book.

Acknowledgments

There are numerous people without whom this book might never have been written. Among those who deserve credit is Kelly Marshall, for enabling me to take on this project and for sticking with me even though I know I made her life stressful at times. Credit needs to go to the entire editing team at Macmillan. I’ve seen what some of the material you have to work with looks like when it comes in from the authors, and I don’t want to trade jobs with any of you. I’d also like to thank my family for continuing to allow me to put in the work required to produce this book—and for not disowning me in the process.