Hi,

I am planning to bulid a online product catalogue. All products in my company will be displayed in the website with full descriptions and product feaures, ie. paragraphs of texts will be stored in the database.

Now, I am only familiar to microsoft access, and it seems that I am not able to input more than 255 characters in each cell. Are there any way I can work around? OR do I have to go with other database packages? I can't afford to go for sql server.

Another problem is that I don't know how to design the database to store the product features. The features will be displayed in the website as bullet points, so I think storing each feature separately will be a good idea. However, different products have different number of features, some even have 20 lines of product features!!! Does it mean I still have to create a maximum number of column to fit in everything?

Tommy

Regarding your first question - go for MySQL:

http://www.mysql.com/

Hello Tommy

Did you try PHP/MySQL?
I don't think that microsoft access is the right solution.

Then for your product and feature table:
1. Proposal: If the feature are for each product totally different:
product(product_id, product_name)
feature(feature_id, feature_name, product_id)

2. Proposal: Different Product may have any common features:
product(product_id, product_name)
feature(feature_id, feature_name)
product_feature(feature_id, product_id)

Walter

Thanks, regarding to MySQL, how much difference is it compare to MS access? I am planning to use ASP.net for my website. I did a few research, but it seems that there are fewer support for MySQL then MS access and SQL server. Can I use the same code for MySQL with MS access?

Tommy

Hello Tommy

You have to differ following:
MySQL is a database server
MSAccess is a database application software

You can connect with MSAccess and with ASP.net to a MySQL Database.

For ASP.net see for instance:
http://www.stardeveloper.com/article...3052201&page=1

For MSAccess see for instance:
http://www.washington.edu/computing/...ql-access.html

Walter

Thanks for the links and info, they are very useful.

Further Questions:
I am hosting the final thing somewhere else, ie. I'm not going to have my own web server. With MS access, a single file will be created and I can put that single file within the asp.net application folder. Can I do the same with MySQL? Does it required support for something for the hosting company? and anything else special for the hosting company I should look for?
And finally, If I already got an access mdb file, are there any way to import everything directly into MySQL?

Regards,
Tommy

You can administrate your mysql database (a database is not a file!) with tools like:
http://www.phpmyadmin.net

access to mysql: there are ways, I haven't tried myself, help yourself
with google!

Walter

You can use a memo field.

Yes, your hosting company has to provide support for MySQL (and PHP or ASP.NET, or whatever you are going to use). Usually web based administration tools are provided.

-Alex