I was hoping for some advice from the experienced developers among you. I have the usual conundrum of any beginner developer and that is of choice. I am not especially worried about what is the best or worst but what options will work for my particular scenario. This is;

Being involved in a research project means I am acquiring a multitude data including, jpeg's, docs, url's...everything but the kitchen sink! So it's getting to that time where this will need to consolidated into a nice and tidy DB. I don’t believe I would need to do complex search's but will certainly have to utilise relationships. (I did consider a Wiki but this became too difficult update and use usefully.)

A quick example of the data and its use:

Personal information; name, address, appearance, race…in fact almost everything else…visual to personality to hobbies.

Then let’s say, the address entries have to be hyperlinked so that information on the city/street/state could be viewed. If you click on the street name then you’d be taken to new information about that, which could include buildings in that area or say the history of the street.

…I’ll stop now before I bore you all to death but hopefully this will give you an idea of what I need to do.

Although at present it is just me and my desktop, I know eventually I will need to migrate this on to a [shared] web server for other users to access.

Having utilised PHP and MySQL on some of my websites I’m certain I could ‘eventually’ achieve what I need but this would be VERY hard work (like I was expecting anything else ) so I have been looking at other options.

FileMaker v8; I’ve been using the trial version of this, it seems a nice program and would allow me to design and implement the things I need quickly. Although there are one or two things that don't work as I was expecting (from the aspect of my PHP/MySQL experience) the main issue I have is in its ability to export the DB for use on the web (I very much doubt I will have the option (or funds) for setting up a FM server) This does not now seem like a viable option.

As I would be buying my web space from a typical webhost (DataFlame, EchoEcho, etc) it seems the PHP/MySQL route would be my only option but as a I have little experience in this field I am worried I am missing other avenues.

Any advice on what other options are available would be most appreciated – Mike

To be honest I think you've summed up the situation well. Whatever backend database you use the issue of relationships whill be the same. With mySQL you will have to enforce the integrity throught he front end (unless version 5 has referential integrity).

PHP is probably as good as any otehr scripting language, although I am more familiar with c# now.

As you get into developing the site you will, I am sure, pick up speed (reusing code, producing standard procedures/funstions etc).

An important factor seems to be cost and this is a very cost effective solution, especially if you have to move to another hosting service.

MySQL has had referential integrity for InnoDB tables since version 3.23.44

Many thanks for the replies, it is good to know my thinking is not too far out of the park.

After several days of intensive web trawling I have decided my best option may be to go with an OpenSource CMS. There are also a couple of plugins I've found (FacileForms - DBQery) that should allow me create the database application within this environment - to boot - everything is based on PHP and MySQL so I already have some grounding there. I still need to do some testing to make sure these plugins do what I think they can.

Using one of these CMS solutions means all the user management and document management is taken care of so I can concentrate on getting the research specifics into the db as needed, which is the really important part.

Utlimately I don't want to take too much time away from my research so this could be the best option.

What's wrong with the simple program? Access 2007 can do all that and more. In the Design view make the address a hyperlink. Create any relationships between as many tables as you desire and with 2007 we included a sharepoint for you sharing type people. I'm just saying, sometimes simple and familiar is best....no....easiest....yeah, that's the word I'm looking for.

I haven't looked at Access for about 10 years but I am sure it could do everything I need. This is not going to be a purley internel project, I am going to want to role this out into the public domain and as buget is a concern, the cheaper the better. It's looking like a PHP/MySQL host may still be my my best option.