Automate Visio from Web?

[Joe]

I need to allow engineers to upload Visio drawings to a database driven web
portal.
During the upload process the engineers would specify shapes on the drawing
that would then be linked to database records using hyperlinks that look like
"http:/mysite/mypage.aspx?param=Record_ID". When other users call up the
page that displays the drawing in Visio Viewer and click on a linked shape
mypage.aspx would then call a stored procedure to retrieve the related
records from the database.

I was originally going to have a Visio Drawing Control on the upload page
and allow the engineer to click on the shapes he wants to link. I would
capture the shape information, and create the hyperlink at that time. I
believe now that this would only be possible from a Windows App, not a Web
form.

1. If it is possible from a Web form, please let me know how.

2. Either way, I also need to know if there is a way to convert a .vsd to
..vdx and back without Visio installed on the Web Server.

 

[Al Edlund]

The second question is the easy one to answer, you do have to use visio to
convert between a vsd and vdx.
v2007 has the ability to link shapes with a new internal structure called a
datarecordset which is document focused. DRs can be linked to backend
OLEDB/ODBC/XML data sources.

The bVisual site (David Parher is one of our MVPS) has an example of how the
viewer might be implemented

http://www.bvisual.net/products/visnet/visNet Explorer Gold Demo Viewer.htm

Accessing of the information behind the drawing might best be considered as
an asp.net question and their are some great tutorials at MS showing how to
do it with web express.

al