| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 81093 | 2007-07-16 01:17:00 | Website/database interaction question | Tony (4941) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 569397 | 2007-07-16 01:17:00 | Here's one for all you Web developers out there. I have: A website for a group I am involved with. An Access database also for the same group. What tools/facilities/general setup do I need to make those two communicate/interact? The sort of thing we are considering at the moment is being able to display data from the database on the website - not necessarily in real time. We are not considering updating the database from the website (at the moment). I probably have the skills to do the work - what I don't have is the knowledge of what I need to do. We currently use GoLive to maintain the website and MS Access 2003 for the database. |
Tony (4941) | ||
| 569398 | 2007-07-16 01:22:00 | Here's one for all you Web developers out there. I have: A website for a group I am involved with. An Access database also for the same group. What tools/facilities/general setup do I need to make those two communicate/interact? The sort of thing we are considering at the moment is being able to display data from the database on the website - not necessarily in real time. We are not considering updating the database from the website (at the moment). I probably have the skills to do the work - what I don't have is the knowledge of what I need to do. We currently use GoLive to maintain the website and MS Access 2003 for the database. YOu will need to be first on a windows server. Dreamweaver allows you to use an access database with a website. |
robbyp (2751) | ||
| 569399 | 2007-07-16 08:11:00 | Further to my OP, I should point out that the Website is on the ISP's webserver and the database is on a machine at the clubrooms. | Tony (4941) | ||
| 569400 | 2007-07-16 09:15:00 | To import data from a database you will need to dynamically generate the pages. You can either do this live on the web server or generate pages from the database and periodically upload them to the server. The pages could be generated by a macro written in Visual Basic or an external program. With this option no scripts would be required on the server end. If you want live data on the site then you need to use a programming language such as PHP to generate pages when they are requested. The web server will need access to a current copy of the database. Learning a first programming language is not a task for the faint of heart so you may want to consider hiring a developer to do this for you. |
TGoddard (7263) | ||
| 569401 | 2007-07-16 11:18:00 | Learning a first programming language is not a task for the faint of heart.You are quite right. Fortunately I have been programming in one language or another for about 35 years, which is why I said "I probably have the skills". :) | Tony (4941) | ||
| 569402 | 2007-07-16 12:53:00 | I've found using VBScript on Active Server Pages to be a very good way of getting data out of Access databases. However, you need to find out whether your ISP allow you to run .asp files on their servers before you head down this path. If you do head down this path, you'll need to learn VBScript (obviously!), but also SQL as this is how you query the database for data. This gives you the advantage of easily updating the website -- update the databse, the website is automatically updated. In fact, if you go with a script-based approach, you'll almost certainly have to use SQL to get the data out. I've been programming in VBScript on ASP for a few years now, and find it a good 'Microsoft-style' solution -- but, of course, you could just as easily use PHP on a Linux (or Windows!) server, and use MySQL instead of Access. (However, as TGoddard has already said, you could simply use the database to generate webpages "offline," then upload those pages to the website.) |
davehartley (3487) | ||
| 569403 | 2007-07-16 21:32:00 | Grab Visual Web Developer Express Edition from the Microsoft website (free). It has tools which let you auto-generate code to extract data from a database, update it, etc. and make it really easy to do. There are also heaps of training tutorials on the Microsoft site on how to do basic interaction with databases. The licence agreement for the software is that it must not be used for commercial purposes, but there are no technical limitations preventing it. |
somebody (208) | ||
| 1 | |||||