1)  I don't have enough knowledge to understand the communications nuts and bolts of the Internet and port forwarding, tunneling, etc.  I mostly get the theory of it, but not the actual 'making it work' part, and I'm up against a little bit of time pressure.  So, my question:  Is it possible to code an html page (an order page that would be hosted on my webhosting company's third party web server), using Sesame API, that would communicate in real time with my internal Sesame database (include security and allow each client who logs onto the webpage to retrieve, in realtime from my internal Sesame database (running on my company server), his unique list of products and pricing, and choose multiple items for an order that would then hit and be processed by my Sesame database)?

I'm unclear how it could/would work with the API being hosted in one place, and the Sesame app hosted in another place.   I'm very interested in this, for several reasons, and am willing to contract out that work so I can monkey see/monkey do as I go forward.

Mark,

Well, to answer your question - "I don't know if there's a reason not to run a Sesame server on the same machine that is running the web server."   My sesame software server is running on an XP machine with 4gb RAM, which is running on our internal company 1gb ethernet network.  The website is hosted by Cox Communications (big cable company), as they also provide our internet access and voice phone lines.   Download speed is 25mb, and upload speed is 2.9mb. 

Some of the stuff we do with Sesame in the course of daily transactions requires a lot of processor crunching (which could be the fault of inelegant programming on my part) - if I put the database on the website, and we have to conduct our business at 25mb or 3mb instead of 1gb, I would think the speed tax would be prohibitive.

Perhaps you're talking about a separate sesame server on the webhost, that would then communicate/interact with the Sesame server on our internal network (retrieving/updating pricing info from my internal server and sending the order info TO my internal server)?  If so, I have no personal reason to 'not do that', other than lack of knowledge.  Of course, I don't know for sure if Cox webhosting allows that.

We have a few hundred customers, of which about 25 have individual web order pages that I have built for them (each weborder page contains the unique product info/pricing info for that specific customer - I make the pages by importing the pricing info from sesame into an Excel template, convert that spreadsheet into an html calculating weborder form (using spreadsheetconverter, which injects java code into the spreadsheet and converts it to html), add security with HTML password lock tool, and then FTP the file to the website.  Periodically I have to repeat this process for each customer's page, to keep pricing in their weborder pages current (ugh, it's a tedious semi-manual task, and cumbersome, and worse it's just not a longterm solution).   My goal is two pronged - 1) I want to offer all of our customers the ability to order online if they wish, and be able to provide that capability to them in an efficient and cost effective manner for me.  2)  If I can get this piece of the puzzle created and working (the frontend weborder page that allows unlimited customers to logon, call a list of their specific products, select those they with to order, and place the order .. all through their browser to my sesame server) then I believe I can package that piece (the online ordering webform is the 'candy' that provides me with the hook to interest these dealers) along with the sesame application (which I wrote) that we are using inhouse very successfully to run our own business, and market that package to other dealers in my industry.   I belong to an industry buying group, and many of them would be, I'm sure, very interested in the capabilities I've described.  My optimistic view is that it could result in more than a dozen sesame installations with a couple hundred sesame clients.  And that's just in my little industry niche.

I need some help with the nuts and bolts (can't market the solution until I get it working for myself.  Such a good selling position, too, to be selling/consulting something that I'm intimately using/tuning everyday).  Anybody who can help me get this up and running, or point me to someone who can, I'm very interested in hearing those inputs/proposals.  My inclination is always to learn/do something on my own from scratch (which is what I did with Sesame, because I didn't have the $40k to buy a commercial package and pay someone big bucks to tweak it and write/add reports and be hostage to someone for support forever), but I don't in this case have the time to muck around for a year trying to reinvent the wheel on my own.

Sorry to be so wordy - my verbals aren't any more succinct than much of my programming 

Mark,

I read that article this week (several times), downloaded PuTTY, attempted to follow the directions, and had no luck getting things going (I did not yet contact Cox Cable support, as I didn't want to go down that road until/if it was determined that running a sesame server on the webhost was the best way to go).   

My router has port forwarding on it (what my old static DSL router used to call pinholes?) which I have read through.  Perhaps that is a way for the web html order page to 'thread' through my firewall and hookup with my company sesame server?

Another thought - is it an option that I would just have a link on my website (on Cox's server) that would send the user to the frontend web order html form on a sesame web server that was running on my internal server?  That way  the frontend weborder order html form would be on the same internal network as my sesame database. 
              Is the sesame web server robust enough to do that?  It wouldn't be running my whole website (which is mostly just brochureware anyway), just hosting that weborder html form and dishing the info therein to the sesame database server?

If you think that is a possible solution, I'll spend some time going through the sesame tutorial on the web server, and tinkering with that.

Mark, thanks for your thoughtful replies.

For now, I'll try to learn how to get my spreadsheet/html order pages to update itself daily by using API programming to pull price record info from Sesame and write a batchfile that automatically FTP's those updated order forms to my website each day.  That will solve some of my 'lag time' and then I'll get to work on the ssh/putty/tunnels/ stuff (either banging my head until I get a breakthrough, or coming across someone in the Sesame community who can consult with/charge me to get it up and running)..