Hey guys!

I've used databases and ASP for a while now. A customer has asked me to implement something for him, that will let him store info about users (eg. name, date of birth, address, telephone etc.). This would need to be accessible primarily on one computer, but maybe on others as well.

I know that I have an option to create an ASP site, run it on localhost, and let him do it through Internet Explorer. However, you often see (in hairdressers, travel agents, restaurants) kindof like MS-DOS looking programs, (like black screen, plain text) - I think this is what the customer is looking for.

Would I be right in saying that this is referred to as the "front-end"?

I have no experience in this. Could anyone tell me what this kind of technology is/how to develop such a program/where I could get a program like this (freeware or commercial)


Thanks
Conor

Yes, that would be described as a font end.

You can do this fairly easily with a db & ASP. Access will be fine so long as you don't have hundreds of co-current users. With heavy use - Access will start to mess up the data because its not really designed for that. For what you describe - Access should be fine.

Typically you would build your access db with all the relevant tables - like Customers for example - a table that contains all the customer info. Then maybe a table 'AdminLogins' - that contains the username / pw for logins.

You'd need the following type ASP pages.

Login - checks username / pw against the database and then directs to the admin page. Set a session variable if login is ok & then check for the session variable on every admin page - if not set - redirect to login. This prevents anybody accessing the admin pages.

Add Customer - inserts a new record in the customer table based off a form input

Edit Customer - updates a customer record - would need a routine to get customer from the db

Each customer should have a unique customer ID in the db. This is how you would reference the customers in your ASP pages.

So, you will need to know SQL to access the db from the ASP pages. You can code SQL into the asp pages as strings, but personally I really don't like that. Access 2000 onwards does allow you to write stored queries. These are kind of like stored procedures in SQL server. You can write your queries in the db and then just call them as routines from the ASP pages.

Hope that helps. What you want to do is certainly very do-able, you'll need to know ASP, SQL and DB creation. Once you get started on it - if you hit problems post here & i'll be happy to help you go in the right direction.

Hi

Thanks for your reply. I know how to connect to databases using ASP pages and running it on a webserver (ie localhost)


Is there anyway I can build a program file that would let me connect to a database?



COnor

What do you mean by program file?

You can connect to a db by writing an application in VBasic or C# etc and create an exe standalone program.

OK I am trying to found a basis of understanding

You know if you were anywhere that has a customer database? It's kind of like an MS-DOS looking window, and you use the Function Keys (eg. Press F2 to enter a new record) and it's text based? Do you know the theory of these programs?

All I want is the name of the (probably ancient ) technology. I will be able to look it up on the web.


Thanks
Conor

There is no specific name for that technology.

Those type of applications are software. Maybe running on a windows based machine or maybe totally non-windows.

Hi

Do you know any examples of such software, and what programming language would you consider appropiate if I was to build a program?>

I don't know of any specific examples - there are probably thousands of them. I'm not sure that finding such an example is going to help you though in terms of creating a new application.

If it's really old - it's probably written in cobol or something like that.

My suggestion, if you want to make something like that is to code it in asp/access or if they want a stand alone app - code it in VBasic / access.

Would Visual Basic provide the legacy "black screen, text only" type of program?

I guess it could if you coded it to look like that.

Why are they hung up on the 1970's look?

Why do you need to develop a program as you can directly access to your database using ASP with SQL? You can always set a web page's backgroup to black and font to white to accomplish the mission.

And if you do use ASP to connect with an Access database perhaps this may hopefully give you some ideas:

Web Database Concept
http://www.bullschmidt.com/concept.asp